If a business plan accounts for capital, operations, and growth, but ignores the mental and emotional capacity of the person leading it, it is incomplete. This belief sits at the center of Shulamit Ber Levtov’s work and defines her role as The Entrepreneurs’ Therapist. As she often reminds founders, “Care for founder mental health is not a personal indulgence. It is a core business strategy.”
Drawing on over thirty years of entrepreneurial experience and more than twenty-five years of professional work in mental health and personal growth, including her clinical practice as a trauma therapist since 2012 and her exclusive focus on supporting entrepreneurs for the past five years, Ber Levtov works at the intersection of leadership, psychology, and sustainability. Her work reframes stress, anxiety, and burnout not as signs of individual weakness, but as predictable responses to environments that demand constant vigilance and self-sacrifice. “Burnout is not a prerequisite for entrepreneurial success,” she says plainly, challenging one of the most deeply embedded myths in business culture.
Early Roots and Lived Experience
Shulamit Ber Levtov grew up in Canada’s Maritime provinces during the 1960s and 1970s, shaped by long days outdoors and a sense of freedom that came from unsupervised play until the streetlights came on. As a Junior Field Naturalist and a Girl Guide, she learned early how ecosystems function through balance, responsiveness, and mutual care. Nature became her first teacher and remains her most reliable source of grounding.
Her path into mental health work was forged through lived experience rather than theory. Ber Levtov has spoken openly about navigating depression, trauma, and periods of profound instability earlier in her life. A near fatal bout of meningitis in 2002 left her physically recovered but psychologically shaken, forcing her to confront trauma long before it was widely understood in nervous system or somatic terms.
One book marked a turning point. There’s Nothing Wrong with You by Cheri Huber transformed her relationship with herself and made healing possible. That message became a lifelong anchor. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” she often tells clients, reframing distress as something that makes sense given what a person has lived through rather than something to be fixed or erased.
From Entrepreneur to Trauma Therapist for Entrepreneurs
Ber Levtov did not set out to become The Entrepreneurs’ Therapist. She built businesses, raised a child as a single parent, navigated financial precarity, and later pursued formal training in counselling and social work. She earned a Master’s degree in Counselling and Spirituality and undertook extensive post graduate training in trauma therapy, financial social work, nonviolent communication, and somatic approaches.
Her professional life came to bridge two worlds that rarely speak clearly to one another. Entrepreneurship, which rewards endurance, speed, and optimization, and mental health, which is often treated as a private concern rather than a leadership issue. Ber Levtov understood both from the inside.
That understanding sharpened in 2020, when she was leading a successful group therapy practice. On paper, the business was thriving. Behind the scenes, she was carrying unsustainable levels of responsibility, doing the work of multiple people, and pushing through increasingly clear signals from her body that the cost was too high. Hustle culture framed this as normal. Her nervous system did not.
When she chose to exit the business earlier than planned, it initially felt like failure. With time, it revealed itself as an act of clarity and self-leadership. “Entrepreneurship and mental health are inseparable,” she reflects. “We can plan for that reality, or we can pay for it later.”
Mental Health as Business Infrastructure
Today, Ber Levtov works with women entrepreneurs and founders as what she calls their Chief Mental Health Officer. She provides steady, shame free one to one therapeutic support, along with consulting, keynote speaking, and educational workshops focused on integrating founder mental health into business planning and decision-making.
Her philosophy challenges the popular language of balance. “Balance is a fallacy,” she says. “What actually works is flow.” Business and personal life are not separate domains. They are deeply intertwined systems that influence one another continuously. When a founder’s mental and emotional well-being erodes, decision quality drops, innovation narrows, and relationships suffer.
Ber Levtov frequently reframes stress responses for clients who arrive believing something is wrong with them. “Stress does not always show up as burnout,” she explains. “Sometimes it shows up as hyper responsibility, anxiety disguised as competence, or the inability to rest without guilt.” These patterns, in her work, are not pathologies. They are signals.
Colleagues consistently describe her as a grounded, compassionate professional who combines clinical depth with a sharp understanding of the entrepreneurial landscape. One peer noted that her work creates a safe space where women entrepreneurs can explore challenges, celebrate victories, and grow with confidence. Another reinforced her central insight, observing that “If you have a business plan, you need a mental health plan. Because you are your business.”
Beyond individual work, Ber Levtov advocates for systemic change. She calls on entrepreneurship education programs, accelerators, investors, and ecosystem leaders to treat founder mental health as foundational rather than optional. Sustainable businesses, she argues, begin with sustainable founders.
Vision for the Future
Looking ahead, Shulamit Ber Levtov is focused on expanding the reach of her work through writing, speaking, and deeper collaboration with founder support communities internationally. She is currently writing a book on women, entrepreneurship, and mental health, and continues to challenge how success is defined and measured in business culture.
At the heart of her vision is a philosophy rooted in compassion and realism. “Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being, if you give it space to move,” she often says, drawing on the work of Dr. Eugene T. Gendlin. In her view, emotions are not obstacles to leadership. They are data.
For entrepreneurs navigating uncertainty, pressure, and identity-level stress, Ber Levtov offers something rare. A framework that honors ambition without sacrificing humanity, and a reminder that “Staying whole is not a detour from success. It is the strategy that makes success sustainable.”
Editorial Note
Shulamit Ber Levtov’s work challenges founders, executives, and ecosystem builders to rethink what responsible leadership truly requires. Her message is simple, rigorous, and disruptive. Mental health is not optional in entrepreneurship. It is foundational. The future of business belongs to leaders willing to build not just profitable companies, but humane ones.
