From a cancer scare and heartbreak to building an empire, the founder of Erica Ministries is teaching women how to heal, build wealth, and leave a legacy.
Chicago winters hit different. It’s not just about the cold—it’s about the transformation. If you’re outside braving these streets, it’s for a reason. And nobody embodies that more than Erica Williams. Founder of Erica Ministries and the Embracing Her Foundation, she has turned a lifetime of experiences—cancer scares, divorce, homelessness, and personal reinvention—into a mission.
“I was really dying to the old woman within, and the new woman within me was ready to live,” she says. And she meant that.
Erica’s story isn’t just about faith—it’s about strategy, obedience, and resilience. Her journey into ministry started early, but it was a cancer scare that shifted everything.
“The doctors told me I had ovarian cancer, and they were saying how it was rapidly spreading,” she recalls. At the same time, she was on the verge of divorce. “I just had this baby—this is my promise. You gave me her name, Lord, and now I’m about to die? What’s going on?”
And then, a revelation: “Stress causes cancer.”
She didn’t hear it once. She heard it three times. That’s when she started making changes—cutting toxic relationships, shifting her diet, detoxing physically and spiritually.
“When I got there, wasn’t no cancer. They couldn’t find nothing. Nothing. Like my body had literally reset itself.”
Erica has been through it all—three marriages, single motherhood, business setbacks—but she didn’t just survive, she studied. She learned what worked and what didn’t. And now? She’s teaching other women how to move with purpose.
“I tell people all the time, the first few times I got married, I wish I would have had somebody to counsel me,” she admits. Especially in the church we teach ” it’s better to marry than to burn”, not recognizing that sometimes we can be married and still burn. We don’t always teach that wour marriage should have purpose. Marriage with no purpose has nothing to drive it forward.”
Her transparency is rare. She doesn’t just tell women how to win—she tells them how she lost. And that honesty is exactly what qualifies her.
If there’s one thing Erica is passionate about, it’s making sure women have real economic power. Grants are great, but she’s here to put women on to procurement—the kind of money that sustains generations.
“A lot of us sleep on local procurement opportunities,” she explains. “The government is not going to be able to do the work. They need to source it out to smaller businesses.”
She breaks it down simply: Why chase grants that might dry up when you could have steady contracts that last years? And her advice isn’t hypothetical—she’s done it. “If your money is just sitting in the bank, all it’s doing is being babysat.”
This isn’t a sit-in-the-audience-and-nod event. Erica’s Power of the Woman conference is about action. “We’re not gatekeeping information. We give you real systems that we use in real time to help you get it done.”
From March 14-15, 2025, at the DoubleTree Hilton by Midway Airport, women from all over will gather to level up in faith, finances, and sisterhood. “We’re gonna be talking about the inner woman—how she can heal, how she can build, how she can secure her bag and hold her money.”
Speakers include powerhouse businesswomen, financial strategists, and industry disruptors. BMO Bank’s Luther Taylor will be there, and so will Whitney Bonds, a mompreneur who went from making $5,000 in a year to $200,000 the next.
“The women that were able to get in that room were able to survive the pandemic,” Erica recalls about the first conference. “Some of them were service-based businesses that were able to thrive. Some of them made more money than they were at their job that laid them off.”
At the end of the day, Erica’s message is simple: What are you leaving behind? What seeds are you planting?
“People don’t come to funerals just to come to funerals. They come based on your impact,” she says. “A tree is not a tree without its fruit.”
She’s got the blueprint. The question is—are you ready to build?
The Power of the Woman conference is happening March 14-15, 2025, at the DoubleTree Hilton by Midway Airport. Get your tickets now at thepowerofthewoman.com. Erica Williams can be found at IAJErica.com and across all platforms @IAmJustErica.
Photo Credit: Erica Williams
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