. . . More about our Champions
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Susan M. Davis
Artist, Mentor, Facilitator
Founder of The CoCreation Community
CoCreate. Communicate. IGNITE Change
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Celia Gates
The Global Brainstorm
Delivering Fresh Thinking
Combine critical and creative thinking for sparks of genius!
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Susan is a strategic marketing planner, website developer, professional book editor, and workshop facilitator. She was a conversation radio/TV producer and host from 2008 - 2013 with two weekly one hour programs, Good and Green Radio and IGNITE Broadcasting, which strengthened lasting connections with change-makers all over the world. Susan has received national honors, awards, and publications for work in the Sustainable Design/Green Building industry, and for contributions to education and broadcasting. What she loves most is being a mentor and connector, supporting entrepreneurs in building their business success, communicating unique messages to enchant & attract, and to give ‘Voice’ to IGNITING positive change in the world. She works both online & peer-to-peer, by mentoring, consulting, public speaking, facilitating workshops in marketing, social media, and brainstorming. Susan has also been a mixed-media fine artist for fifty years. She has integrated her passions and talents in the areas of design, fine art, and holistic sustainability into a variety of The Co-Creation Community offerings over the past eleven years.
“I most enjoy Co-Creating, Communicating, and IGNITING change, taking you from 'ME' to 'WE' in the most FUN way possible!”
Having won various invention and innovation awards including British Consumer Inventor of the Year, the MINDS award for contribution to renewable energy, and European Female Designer of the Year–Celia Gates published her book, Secret Weapon; how to have a brainwave and make your brain your best friend. In 2012 the Chartered Management Institute short-listed her first book From Brainwave To Business for the Innovation and Entrepreneurship, book of the year. This was a huge honor for her.
Fundamentally Celia believes that her brain works in much the same way as yours does. Our brains are muscles. As soon as we start treating them as such – training and exercising them accordingly we quickly see the value we’re able to generate with combined critical and creative thinking.
As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week each year Celia delivers an event called the Global Brainstorm. This is a mass meeting of minds. It is an opportunity to plug into a power-pack of consciousness to stimulate sparks of genius–the ripple effects of which are measured as they change the future for years.
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"As the world reaches out to itself, it’s imperative that we upgrade systemic thinking if conflict is to be avoided and growth gained through cross-cultural collaboration - my true passion is Co-Creation!"
Sara B. Hart, PhD
Speaker, Consultant, Coach, Author
Founder of Prime Spark Women
The Second Women’s Revolution is here.
(Started by a woman who helped drive the first one.)
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A llifelong advocate for social change, Sara is a successful entrepreneur and well-known speaker on motivation, cultural and business performance issues, and the psychology of success. Her current main focus is Prime Spark: The Power of Older Women. Sara empowers women 55+ to stay relevant in a quickly changing world.
Sara Hart earned her Ph.D. at Northwestern University and then taught at Queens College in New York City. She spent 20 years at Pfizer where she was responsible for leadership, team, and organization development for the research division in the US. She also was head of HR at the research center in the UK.
After Pfizer, she founded Hartcom, a management consulting company. She also became Executive Director of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, an advanced research and advocacy group increasing the impact of women on all aspects of technology. At the Institute she created and led Innovation Workshops working dynamically with women and girls across academic, non-profit, and high-tech corporate cultures. She also served as an Executive Director with Association Management Solutions which provides forum management services to some the most innovative technology associations. Sara received formal coaching training at the prestigious Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara and is one of only two certified Thinking Environment™ instructors in the United States.
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"It is time for us to find that spark that will ignite our way forward, illuminating our path and reflecting our gifts in the world. This is the spark in the prime of our lives. This is our Prime Spark."
J.R. Armstrong
Author, Quilter, Collector of Malapropisms
Curl up in a quilt with a good book and get ready for an adventure
Betty Louise
Radio Broadcaster, Coach
CoFounder of Voices of Our Story
Cultivating Compassionate Action
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Betty Louise has been a certified broadcaster for KVMR Community Radio in Nevada City, California since 2016. She enjoys producing shows that have a blend of public affairs and music fitting for the topic. She produced 60 audio segments, catching stories from homeless people, concerned citizens, organizations supporting homeless people, and officials charged with solutions in 2017 for the project, "A Place to Call Home." This project was partially funded by California Humanities and California Arts Council and sponsored by KVMR. The edited stories can be found on Storycatchers, under the Community tab on the KVMR website. She is a Master Facilitator and is currently using these skills at the Sierra Academy of Expeditionary Learning in Nevada City. She led discovery exercises and offered content from the "A Place to Call Home" project for classroom presentations, including homeless people in the presentations and discussions. One of the exercises, “facilitated StoryCircles," involved community leaders, students, and homeless people and encouraged learning to build a community working together creating solutions. She, along with a project team, are creating a curriculum to promote students' understanding of the homeless issue and how they can get involved in helping to influence others in the community to understand. She has just completed a grant proposal to California Humanities to expand this project.
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“I am a hands-on producer, effective at bringing projects from concept to reality, with a passion for shifting perceptions on complicated issues through live and entertaining performances, podcasts, videos, and radio broadcasting."
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Dee Anne Dinelli
Fine Art Photographer
Conveying the depth of soul and expression of your unique personality
Dee Anne Dinelli is a professional photographer specializing in fine-art portraiture and owner of Shadow Dance Photography. Shadow Dance Photography started in 2005, in partnership with the late fine-art photographer, Leslie Elias. In 2010, Shadow Dance published a book called In the Company of Dogs.
While raising three children, and working as a special education speech therapist for 38 years, Dee explored 35 mm and medium format photography, setting up a film darkroom wherever she lived. Dee now works in a digital format and has a studio on her property in Nevada City, California.
As a founding Board of Directors member for Sierra Roots, a Nevada City, California non-profit organization focused on building community with homeless people, Dee created a project called Faces of Change, portraits of homeless folks whom she met along the way. This project led to gallery shows in her hometown of Nevada City/Grass Valley, and in Sacramento, California.
In 2017, Dee was a primary collaborator with A-Place-To-Call-Home/Voices of Our Story, an ongoing project funded, in part, by grants from California Humanities and California Arts Council. Her photographs are part of several multi-media film shorts and videos, and she was one of the featured artists in the gallery show at The Center For the Arts, Granucci Gallery, in Grass Valley, California entitled, A Place To Call Home: Stories Inspiring Transformation. Her photographs were also the featured visual for the 2018 A-Place-To-Call-Home Compassionate Action Wall Calendar which was produced as part of this arts-related, grant-funded project.
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In 2018, Dee was one of the fifteen artists chosen to participate in Belonging, I Am Here, a grant-funded project created by Ruth Chase, Artist in Residence, Nevada County Arts Council.
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“I am especially drawn to photographing artists, musicians, poets, playwrights, and actors in their most comfortable setting. Edgy and creative work is a particular favorite."
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J.R. Armstrong is a fourth-generation born Detroiter, raised in southeast Michigan. In the 5th grade, she wrote a sci-fi story for a class assignment that hooked her on writing. After college, she married, and J.R. and her husband spent a month traveling across the USA—planting the seeds for a lifelong passion to travel, research, meet people along the way, and introduce them to her books.
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J.R. wrote “Owe It to the Wind” and “Truly, Everything” in eleven cities, on two continents, and a Caribbean island. Both books won First Place in ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards for Romance. "Truly, Everything" was also a Finalist in the Eric Hoffer and Indie Excellence Awards.
J.R. Armstrong is creative, spontaneous, and has always had a vivid imagination. She loves to collect malapropisms—seeing the wrong word when reading too quickly. One of her recent malapropisms was reading “Ideas for a root canal and what to put in it”, instead of “Ideas for a root cellar and what to put in it.” Much to her children's dismay, J.R. can occasionally be found sledding during a snowstorm, and she hopes to try out the luge in western Michigan, someday.
When she's not writing, you’ll find J.R. quilting, sewing, knitting, or curled up with a good book. She loves to read and write mystery, romance, books with some quirkiness to the story. J.R. has published four books: "Owe it to the Wind; "Truly, Everything"; "Beg(ga)(he)r"; and "A Tin Box of Matches—Book 1 in The Switch Killer Trilogy".
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“I want to take my readers on an adventure where you'll meet characters you recognize and some quirky ones, too. In my books, you'll find a bit of romance, some mystery, and enough adventure to make you want to curl up in a quilt and escape into the story.
Barbi Buckles, RN
Nurse Coach for a Better You
An experienced RN helping you make transformative, lasting physical and behavioral lifestyle changes to foster your healthier, happier, and more gratifying life.
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Laurie Bethell-Bratt
Doug Bratt
Soul Streaming
Reclaim Energy . Renew Life . Reconnect With the Divine
The Grateful Bears Project
Join the Sleuth
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GratefulBears.com
After 39 years as a nurse at the bedside, primarily in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Barbi Buckles decided to find a new path that connected with her sole purpose as a nurse: "Taking Care of My Patients."
As a bedside nurse, she was frustrated with our current medical model focusing on acute problems and quick solutions; never focusing on the real problems behind the illness. Barbi watched her patients come and go frequently, never getting better. If one pill did not work, they would try a different one.
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"Hurry up, move out, next patient, please !!"
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Barbi knew there had to be more than this. Shedid not start her nursing career to see her patients on a conveyer belt. She looked for a way to utilize her nursing experience and skills, combined with her passion for taking care of patients. Transformational Nurse Coaching is the resulting answer to Barbi's dreams.
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Barbi Buckles, RN, believes in making humanity a little better by helping others realize positive change through encouragement and empowerment. She completed intensive six-month training in individualized coaching techniques that spark transformation and life-long changes in her patients. She is ecstatic that this new career direction allows the freedom to have her own business, where she can truly connect with people on a deeper level by creating inspiration and healing in their lives they never thought possible.
Barbi's calling and her practice are now integrated. She is the nurse coach for a better you, helping you with your transformation from illness to wellness.
"After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, I have made it my life journey educating myself how to prevent and even eliminate disease and illness.
I believe in making humanity a little better by helping others realize positive change through encouragement and empowerment."
Laurie has a vast array of experience in navigating life's journey : managing great loss and grief recovery, being a single mom for ten years, blending families in remarriage, surviving childhood trauma, years of tenure as a corporate officer in a large consumer products company, co-founding a new company with her husband. She is currently writing a book on Western and Eastern medicine's approaches to healing. The path she has chosen has not been lined with ease or simplicity, yet she has great joy, fulfillment, riches from a spiritual perspective, and passion for sharing her continually growing wisdom, to benefit her clients.
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The Grateful Bears Project is a labor of love, wishing to make a difference on our fragile planet. Both Doug Bratt's and Laurie Bethell's goal is to share gratitude and compassion through these plush, wide-eyed bears. Each collectable bear, in a series of 108 numbered bears, will be made in the likeness of a philanthropic individual with notoriety, with 100% of the profits going to each individual bears charity of choice. Some of the causes that are benefitting from Grateful Bears to date are the SEVA Foundation, REX Foundation and Camp WinnaRainbow.
Doug and Laurie met in a healing arts class in 2011. They wed on a secluded beach in Costa Rica two years later. It was at that ceremony that the inspiration to create a new line of bears was birthed.
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"HumanKind will respond with open hearts to the passion, joy, and optimism you radiate."
