Candace Freedenberg, Untapped Potential
Meet Candace Freedenberg, the visionary Founder and President of Untapped Potential, a Connecticut-based organization dedicated to advancing gender equality in the workplace. As a mother herself, Candace deeply understands the challenges women face in balancing professional aspirations with caregiving responsibilities. With over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, including roles at IBM and Eastman Kodak, Candace combines her engineering expertise with a passion for empowering women. Through Untapped Potential, she has created innovative offerings like their trademark Flexreturn program, which helps professional women re-enter the workforce after caregiving breaks, bridging the gap between talent and opportunity.
Under Candace's leadership, Untapped Potential has achieved remarkable milestones, including delivering for Fortune 50 companies and recognition as the SBA CT Woman-Owned Business of the Year in 2022. Her work has garnered accolades such as the CT Entrepreneur Award in the Social Good category, and the organization continues to grow, supporting over 200 women in their return-to-work journeys. Candace's commitment to fostering work-life balance and gender equity has inspired meaningful change, not only in Connecticut but also as a model for communities nationwide.
Candace's proactive approach centers on valuing caregiving as a societal benefit and challenging entrenched workplace traditions. Her efforts have opened doors for women in STEM and other fields, enabling them to regain confidence, skills, and networks as they transition back into professional roles. Through events like speed interviews and mentorship programs, Untapped Potential connects market-ready talent with workplace demands, creating a win-win for candidates and employers alike.
Candace, who is impacted by the work that you do?
“The people most impacted by our work are families—particularly moms and parents. We impact their economic fortune by helping them return to their professional caliber, rebuilding their self-esteem, and helping them realize the return on investment from both their education and experience.
We're advancing businesses by impacting the GDP (economic output). We bring high-caliber talent to businesses for a fraction of the price in that first three-month period. This enables women to add value to the economy and supports women in senior roles and women in STEM. It creates a path for another 20 years in positions of value, contributing more to our economy. By getting these women back to their caliber rather than leaving them sidelined, we positively impact socioeconomic income, GDP, and tax revenue.
When I talk about families, I'm addressing the childcare shortage. These women often sacrifice significant income to provide care at home. While they're saving the system from needing additional caregivers or subsidies, their contributions go unpaid. We want them to feel valued for this essential economic service during their career breaks.
A lot of our work is providing professional development services to our moms—helping with elevator pitches, resume preparation, and career guidance. We do this upfront because we know that if we get these women ready to sit at the table with interviewers, their value will be recognized. Often, women are caught in the daily whirlwind of responsibilities and don't take time to prepare themselves or explore new opportunities. We bring information to them rapidly and use our knowledge to connect them to appropriate next career paths.
We also work with women who are currently in their field and on an upward trajectory, but are realizing the demands are increasing just as they have young children. They no longer want that all-consuming career right now and are looking to scale back while still using their skills.
Additionally, we serve those who have unintentionally stagnated their careers while trying to be superheroes both at work and at home. They fulfilled all requirements but couldn't raise their hands for stretch assignments, take on high-visibility clients, or accept international opportunities because they were managing school pickups, activities, and household responsibilities. Now they need to reframe their accomplishments and either advocate for themselves at their current company or find an organization that values developing women for senior roles.
There's also a third demographic that benefits: our mentors. Our industry mentors genuinely want to lift women up and be viewed as professionals who impact others. Many people want to make a difference, and through a small commitment - like a ladies' night out once a quarter where they can leverage their professional experience. They bring tremendous value by welcoming returning moms."
Do you have a personal connection to this work? What was the genesis of all this?
"I saw the economic loss that was happening with this untapped talent. During my MBA at Boston University while working at IBM, my economics professor taught us to identify labor that can't transfer to the right place at the right time - what becomes latent talent. There's no clearer example of this than moms who transition away from their careers.
Commonly understood economic business cycles are driven by supply and demand, but he explained an underlying factor is the lag time in training labor for upcoming growth industries. For example, when we have a surplus of MBAs but need oil field workers, you can't easily retrain those MBAs, resulting in capital loss - a downturn in one sector and an inability to capture growth in another.
In our communities, we have this educated, experienced human capital with valuable institutional knowledge. But because they couldn't make the rigid nine-to-five industrial age workplace function alongside family responsibilities, they left the workforce entirely - going 'cold turkey' when perhaps they didn't need to. The workplace wasn't flexible enough in my time, despite my efforts to make flexibility work for dual-income couples maintaining two careers.
In early 2015, I attended an event where we broke into small groups to discuss our vision for success and what value we wanted to bring. I heard from so many moms who said things like: 'I would love to be doing something else, but this is all I can manage now.' They were former lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. Meanwhile, moms in the workplace worried they were missing their children's best years while traveling four months of the year. They felt their family life was slipping away with no control over it.
There was no happy middle ground - and that really was the genesis of our work."
While rewarding, purpose driven work can also require significant energy from us. Do you have a self-care routine that helps you maintain balance?
"I actually thrive on the multi-faceted nature of entrepreneurship. I enjoy being the person who solves website issues, gets into the nitty-gritty, works closely with clients to understand their business, and connects with candidates based on their experiences. I love that it's not just sitting in an office doing one thing—I enjoy solving business problems and envisioning where candidates could thrive. Then there's my 'homework time' when I'm working on the website, managing finances, or similar tasks.
I definitely wear multiple hats, and I have several activities I enjoy outside of work. I wouldn't call myself much of a hobbyist, but I do golf with a wonderful partner - we're the reigning champions of our league two years running. My family is incredibly important to me, and we've been excited watching each of them start their paths to adulthood.
One cool project I'm working on is a tiny home. As an engineer, I can get deeply involved in the planning, and I love looking through all the magazines and exploring the possibilities of what it could be. I might actually be disappointed when it's finally completed!"
We acknowledged how curiosity and problem solving go hand in hand. "People sometimes ask, 'Well, you're an engineer. Why are you doing this?' One of our first candidates said it beautifully: 'Candace is engineering social change for women today,' and I love that description.
The truth is, throughout my career, I've always been solving people problems alongside technical ones - whether implementing telecommuting in 1992 (well before it was common), helping Kodak capitalize on digital imagery during the dot-com boom, or breaking down communication silos between electrical, optical, and mechanical engineers working in different buildings. I'd question, 'How do we bridge these gaps socially?' In many ways, I feel like I've always been facilitating social change in the workplace."
Has there been a particular challenge in your own life, where looking back now, you realize it was a pivotal moment in your own growth journey?
"I'm going to approach this from a couple of different angles. Growing up, we were taught that women could do anything - be engineers, break through glass ceilings. But I also wanted to be a parent, and I wasn't sure both could be done simultaneously. With my husband in the United States Marine Corps, my strategy was to absorb as much engineering experience as possible, thinking I might not be able to continue forever. As an optical engineer, a rare specialty, I even learned to teach dancercise as a backup plan for when I'd have 'that other life.'
I was fortunate that IBM agreed to telecommuting with me many years ago. Even at Kodak, I worked remotely at times to be with my husband while maintaining my career. But when Kodak was selling to ITT and insisted I return to the plant multiple states away, I faced a true challenge. I had two children at home with caregivers, my husband was established in our location, and the alternatives—learning a new field, working in a secure facility with no family communication, plus a long commute - just wouldn't fit our lives.
Looking back, that moment opened doors for me to be the mom I was meant to be during those years. The company essentially made the decision for me that I had been struggling to make actively myself. It came at a particularly interesting time because I had just attended a conference with a futurist speaker who highlighted the major changes ahead: medical advancements extending our working lives and technological changes requiring career pivots every decade.
Sitting in that conference room—after the extreme logistics of flying there with two kids, arranging childcare with a college friend, and navigating everyone's expectations about motherhood - I had a realization. If we're going to reinvent ourselves every decade anyway, why couldn't I spend this decade raising children, then skill up for whatever comes next? That insight directly connects to our skill-up program for women with untapped potential. We're helping women learn the latest tools like prompt engineering and AI, and they're discovering their calling.
This approach - valuing different chapters in life, each perhaps lasting a decade - has shaped my philosophy. We can have a decade focusing on one area, then switch and have another meaningful decade doing something else. I absolutely foresee that I might have another decade ahead to learn something completely new."
Community and mentorship are so important. Is there a particular person or persons that you’ve drawn inspiration from over the years?
"I've been very fortunate to have a childhood friend in the HR space who's also a business leader. She was at Johnson & Johnson when I first had this idea, then worked in Chile for a mining company, and later became the CHRO at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Lisa Alvarez-Calderon, now Founder of Shine Consulting, has always provided a valuable perspective and has been a mentor from the beginning. While she wasn't in our target demographic, she understood the client side.
There are two others who have helped elevate Untapped Potential. Rachel Galligan runs a 30-year executive search firm with her sister, Cates Consulting, operating on both the East and West coasts. She's been an advocate for women and for our work, opening her expertise to teach me the ins and outs of the industry. I knew mid-career internships for moms could work because Rachel and I had previously collaborated on high school fundraising projects. We recruited optical engineering companies to donate internships that parents could bid on for their children. This experience directly influenced my approach when I had the 'aha moment' about helping moms return to work.
Another influential mentor was Denise Whitford from Connecticut SBDC. When I pitched my business concept, many people didn't understand it. Some even suggested I was 'solving a problem that doesn't exist.' They couldn't imagine that women with Cornell Law degrees or Duke credentials or those who had been marketing directors at Morgan Stanley would want to return to work. Denise understood the components of what I was trying to achieve, took it under her wing, and validated that this could indeed be done."
Last question, what advice would you offer the woman with a whisper in her heart to lean deeper into her power?
"My first thought is: really explore, be curious. It doesn't have to be 'I'm going to be a 40-hour-week contributor to ABC company in this role.' Start exploring what you could do, what's out there, where you might fit. I think women often don't know where they fit, and they want to wait until everything's perfect.
My point is, don't wait to start exploring. That's why we have our quarterly mentor mingles, our coffees, and different opportunities—so women can step outside their 'mom box' and their daily duties in micro ways to explore different possibilities. It will never be perfect. You will never not have a college kid living at home or needing your time. The more you interact with others, the more it will help guide your solution.
Even meeting people at our mentor events, I see women thinking, 'Oh, I could do that,' or 'I could explore that opportunity.' If you stay home in your daily mode, doing all the things that fall to you because you're not working, you'll never find that window of opportunity. So make these micro steps—just start exploring, and things will fall into place."
