Consultant, Coach, Educator, Author, Presenter
IF YOU WANT TO FLY, GIVE UP EVERYTHING THAT WEIGHS YOU DOWN.
Are there aspects of your life that might be weighing you down and preventing you from moving forward in the direction of your goals?
Have you been challenged or frustrated by trying to find meaning, satisfaction, direction, and fulfillment in your life?
Are you struggling to identify and clarify your personal, interpersonal, social, spiritual, academic, or professional goals and dreams?
I can help. I offer my clients professional coaching and consulting services that are designed to assist them in moving forward in their goal pursuits in a positive and productive way.
I approach every interaction with my clients from an open, positive, compassionate, and empowering perspective. That means I look for, celebrate, and value your unique strengths, courage, accomplishments, and limitless potential. I view each of my clients as worthy, complex, and capable of achieving their own individual goals and dreams.
ESSENTIAL INTERPERSONAL SOLUTIONS
Through Essential Interpersonal Solutions, clients of all ages can work with me toward identifying and overcoming their social, emotional, personal, interpersonal, educational, spiritual, or professional challenges and work toward accomplishing their specific goals in a safe and supportive atmosphere of understanding and growth, facilitated through either a coaching or consulting approach.
Helping my clients understand the important differences between coaching and consulting empowers them to make a more informed decision about which approach might work best for them as they identify, explore, and overcome their life challenges to accomplish their chosen goals.
Coaching may be a good fit for clients who prefer participating in a collaborative relationship where the coach and client are perceived as equals. As the coach, I recognize you as the expert in your own life and I assist you in finding the answers within yourself, emphasizing an inward-focused approach to achieving your goals.
Consulting may be a good fit for clients who prefer a more directive, outward-focused approach to achieving their goals. As a professional who is an expert in my field, I use my knowledge and experience to analyze your situation and make recommendations for achieving your goals by providing you with options to help you overcome any obstacles and challenges.
So, coaching helps you explore possibilities, and consulting provides you with possibilities. No matter which option feels like a better fit for you, both are effective pathways to the realization of your goals.
For more detailed information about these specific services, please click on the links below.
IN EVERY CHILD'S CORNER
I am the founder and Executive Director of In Every Child's Corner. The mission of this nonprofit organization is to provide all children with access to proven social and emotional learning (SEL) curricula designed to assist them in developing social and emotional competencies to successfully navigate through a challenging world.
This organization focuses on introducing and facilitating SEL curricula throughout various academic sites while maintaining teacher support and parent education, as well as gathering data to track student success. Emphasis on student success includes teaching children how to apply SEL skills in all phases of their lives, both within classroom environments and beyond.
Staff support includes training seminars, implementation strategies, and suggestions for the successful integration of multicultural awareness and sensitivity, while maintaining an ethically informed sensibility throughout all interactions with students, parents, staff, administrators, and families.
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING
A fundamental ingredient for children's success in school and in all phases of their life includes the important skills that are taught in social and emotional learning (SEL) curricula. Empirical research has found that children who participate in SEL programs showed statistically significant gains in attitudes, behaviors, interpersonal skills, and academic achievement.
The utilization of SEL curricula within learning environments helps to promote and foster social and emotional competence while empowering children with the skills they need for developing self-regulation. This equips them with the tools they need to develop and sustain healthy relationships, evaluate and practice coping strategies to mitigate stress, and experience higher levels of academic success.
Some key concepts included in SEL curricula include empathy building, emotional management, and problem-solving skills. Through repeated reinforcement and practice of SEL strategies and skills, decreases in aggression and conduct problems may result, while boosting a child’s self-esteem and their ability to interact effectively with others.
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
Communicating with others is something that we usually take for granted because we do it all the time. In fact, most of us assume that we're really good communicators. But sometimes our communications with others can break down for a variety of reasons. When this happens, our ability to effectively communicate with others becomes more challenging and a lot less effective.
The most basic definition of communication involves transferring information from one person to another in order to achieve a shared understanding of what was communicated. In order for this process to work effectively, the speaker and the listener must be able to fundamentally consider each other's general intentions, beliefs, knowledge, and goals throughout the conversation.
The true complexity and inherent challenges presented by the communication process becomes even more evident when we add the wide assortment of unavoidable human variables that are always present in our conversations, including our individual and collective perspectives, perceptions, and purpose.
To all this, we often have to include the conversational conflicts that may arise when we use words that have multiple meanings, making them ambiguous, confusing, and open to misinterpretation without proper clarification during the conversation.
So in reality, communication can be a difficult and often ineffective form of interpersonal interactions, even under the best of circumstances. Fortunately, there are effective strategies for improving our communication pathways so that we can avoid some of these common problems and interact successfully with others.
BULLYING
Bullying is defined as a form of aggression which is intentional, repeated, and involves a power differential between the victim and the victimizer. Bullying manifests in many forms including; physical, verbal, social, or relational. Cyberbullying is especially problematic because of the far-reaching capabilities of cell phones, the internet, and social media.
All forms of bullying have an inherent probability of causing pain, stress, anxiety, and anguish to the victim, which can sometimes result in the victim feeling so hopeless and helpless that they may be at much higher risk for self-harm. Bullying is a deeply entrenched and ubiquitous problem within school systems. Focused attention needs to be paid on immediate and pro-social interventions so that both the victims and the victimizers can learn how to move beyond the bullying cycle.
MULTICULTURALISM
Multiculturalism refers to recognizing and embracing cultural differences from a perspective of respect and understanding, acknowledging that the world is full of a wide variety of people, cultures, and religions, and it is this variety, in its totality, that creates the amazing diversity which comprises the people of the world.
By embracing multiculturalism we have the opportunity to learn about other people’s cultures and customs, religious beliefs, spirituality, values and relational structures, modes of behavior, symbolism, history, and so much more. Our world is vastly diverse and this diversity must be recognized and respected as an opportunity for shared knowledge and learning. By doing so, we honor the spectacular tapestry of the human species.
REFRAMING OUR APPROACH
Whether we consciously realize it, scientific thinking is intuitively embedded in all of us and manifests in a multitude of ways. From early childhood we begin to develop specific skills that allow us to think scientifically as we navigate through our lives.
Sometimes our ability to identify and achieve our goals can become compromised by our inability to know where or how to start. This often occurs because of a rupture in our approach.
If we can reframe our approach to complex actions like goal setting, decision-making, problem-solving, emotional regulation, interpersonal relationships, and communication as fundamental processes, we can begin to untangle them to better understand them, which will increase our effectiveness in successfully moving forward to achieve our goals.
PRESENTATIONS AND GUEST SPEAKER DISCUSSIONS
I truly appreciate having the opportunity to share my knowledge with others, and to learn from them, too!
Interactive presentations designed to educate and entertain allow for a genuine connection to occur between myself and my participants, providing empowering outlets for information sharing and perspective-taking as we discuss important concepts.
I am available to speak to businesses, groups, and organizations of any size on the topics within my areas of specialization. Training seminars are also available.
All presentations and seminars include a fusion of humor and science to help us understand the complexities, consequences, and importance of human interactions.
Please contact me for more information.
A SELECTION OF SAMPLE PRESENTATION TOPICS:
On Being a Scientist
Defining Modern Prejudice and why it Still Exists
What is Religious Privilege and why Should we Care?
Ethics, Anyone? Why it Matters
Microaggressions - Identifying our Internal Biases
Balancing Identities in a Complex World
We are all Intuitive Psychologists
Social and Emotional Skills for Children - and Adults!
Trying, Striving, Thriving
Group Dynamics - Why Can't we all Just Get Along?
Goal-Directed Behavior
Effective Leadership
The Only Place to Find Perfection is in the Dictionary!
We are all Models - Role Models
Executive Functioning - It's not About Business!
The Myths of Marriage and Parenthood
The Benefits and Consequences of a Child's Easy Life
The 3 Concepts That our Children Must Master
The Happiness Quotient
Introversion/Extroversion - What's the difference and why it Matters