Hello Dear One ~
Thank you for finding your way to my page. I know you are here because you felt a connection to me, my blog, and/or my social media pages. Welcome, I am happy you are here.
You are also probably curious about me, my message and my mission. So please read on to learn more about how The Poetosopher came to be.
About Me
I was born in the early 60’s in Asheville, NC a child of a WWII vet and his small town bride. I enjoyed a childhood on a farm with dogs, cattle and tobacco. I learned about hard work, perseverance and laughter from my dad, watching him go to work every day and then work hard on the farm in the evenings. My mom also taught me about hard work and creativity. She worked a lot in the garden and cooked, froze or canned all our food and made all my clothes. Early on I realized education was my ticket to the larger physical world and world of ideas.
I graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville magna cum laude with a degree in Engineering and balanced that with a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies a few years later. An introvert by nature, I spent 30 years in pod land in corporate America in jobs ranging from Sales Engineer for national sales force of 10,000; to production supervisor for a Fortune 100 company; to supervisor/engineer for a local non-profit working with a differently abled population; to managing engineers for a multinational company and finally, ended my corporate career, working for 10 years as a designer for women’s and men’s performance underwear and intimate apparel – technically/creatively designing over $1 billion in retail goods over that decade.
About My Message
My path through the corporate world, though mostly linear from a financial and growth perspective, was quite circuitous from a wisdom perspective. The common thread that ran through my experience was the ability to listen to others and distill their story into its essence concisely and precisely. I used this skill to persuade Directors and VP’s to approve the purchase of millions of dollars of equipment for manufacturing, to train and improve methods to increase efficiencies and generate cost savings and, most importantly for me, to assist others in finding the wisdom in their journey, the power in their pain and the life in their lessons.
Over the years I spent thousands of hours persuasively writing and communicating; guiding individuals & teams in strategic planning, determining optimal financial outcomes, setting project management milestones, delivering projects on time and under budget. Over time I found myself having these same conversations at a personal level when friends and coworkers needed the right words or strategy to close a deal or resolve an issue in their lives. This background led one of my managers to remark that the building always tilted to my corner. I managed with an open-door policy and most days found a constant stream of people stopping by looking for answers.
About My Mission
Working with so many people over the years I learned most people carry their own solutions within, if they just knew how to look for them. As The Poetosopher, I use my strength in asking the right questions to intuitively guide my tribe to go within, to dig, to excavate, to discover, refine and polish their own crystal ball and become their own oracle.