It began with a vision

To unleash and amplify the incredible energy and innovation of non-profit and small business leaders who have ideas that will change lives in the most positive ways. 

We are, after all, a rare bunch. Whether we sought to be leaders or leadership found us, we knew from the beginning that we wanted to do it differently.  

The status quo was never enough - we want to change the conversation. We want to feel inspired and be fully, unequivocally engaged - and we believe others give their best when they are, too! For us, people are not a means to an end, but the very reason for being.

 

In the gap between intentions and reality, something happened.

Translating that vision into concrete words and action somehow felt like shoveling air. The apathy and self-protection of the status quo stood like soldiers against our efforts. And the demands of day-to-day survival and self-doubt took their toll in exhaustion and disappointment.

You are not alone - and it doesn't have to be this way. 

That’s why I created the Center for Inspired Leaders - equal doses of fresh insight, sustainable skills, and authentic connection with other leaders like you, all in a safe and private community with ongoing support from me. 

At the Center is a revolutionary strengths-focused approach that will help you get out of the weeds and lead the way you intended.

 
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My journey

Over the course of 40+ years, I led treatment programs for developmentally different children and adults; designed and ran an undergraduate degree program at a private college; was founding Executive Director of an innovative, strengths-focused teen center; created and led the Youth Resiliency Project in Portland, Maine; traveled the US and Canada teaching others about resilience and the power of a strengths perspective; and wrote hundreds of blog posts and other tools that reached inspired leaders from New Zealand to South Africa to South Central LA.

Every one of these endeavors faced heavy resistance from the status quo and required that massive barriers be overcome. In every case, there were moments when we thought we'd fail - financially, ideologically, or organizationally.

These journeys took me through the darkest valleys and most exciting successes of leadership.

  • Hired as director of an undergraduate degree program and lacking the minimum academic credentials to do the job, I was charged with saving the failing program before it was eliminated - and had nine months to do it.

  • Three days after being hired as the first ED for an exciting new nonprofit, $90,000 in start-up funds were revoked.

  • Hired to re-invent a struggling collection of programs in a large agency, I discovered that the federally-mandated conditions of a half-million dollars in federal grant funding were completely contrary to the vision I had been hired to realize.

Funding failures, regulatory snafus, and my own self-doubt and undeniable weaknesses were ever-present. Yet we always prevailed.

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How? My Teachers

I had magnificent teachers: thousands of impossibly resilient children, families, individuals, and organizations that I had the privilege to walk with and learn from as they faced far greater adversity - and prevailed.

Curious to the end, I wanted to know why some "made it" - tapping the strengths within and around them - while others struggled without relief. I learned hundreds of lessons from them, but one stood out above the others. The resilient ones were never tied to their current reality. They always had a picture of themselves (and the world around them) that pulled them forward. They lived into that vision, gaining momentum with each small step in its direction.

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The Culmination

The Center for Inspired Leaders is the culmination of these lessons learned. It is designed to amplify the wisdom of these marvelous and unnamed teachers from the past - and unleash the ideas and energy of leaders just like you.

As Henry David Thoreau so eloquently advised, "If you have built castles in the air; your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Join me in the Center for Inspired Leaders, where your ideas - and spirit for change - will be nurtured and grown as you build a foundation under them.