I AM.

I am an Emmy-award winning coach, creative strategist, podcaster, writer, teacher and social worker who has been helping nonprofits, publishers, authors, small business and career changers tell their stories for 20 plus years.

CREATIVE STRATEGIST, TRAINER + COACH.

I serve as Principal, HEFT Creative Strategies, where I believe in helping human beings and organizations be their best selves through story and have consulted with a range of organizations and individuals including Leo Burnett, Content R|S, lylole, Jeff Pfaller, Inc., Human Elements, Koan, FRIENDS, Chapin Hall, abstract artist Mark Yee, coaches Diane Grimard Wilson & Elizabeth Lava, Story Jam Studio, Children Trust Michigan, TORANA group, and The Center for Advanced Emotional Intelligence.

I'm also honored to work as a TMI Leadership Trainer for The Montana Institute.

TEACHER.
I serve as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College Chicago, where I teach Self-Management and Freelancing and as a Lecturer (and part-time faculty) at Lake Forest College, where I teach LOOP 202: 21st Century Development and Liberal Arts and The Workplace.

NONPROFIT LEADER.
I worked at Prevent Child Abuse America from 2007-2016, including serving as the Senior Director of Strategic Communications. While there, I introduced the organization to social media, wrote and managed grants from the CDC and Doris Duke, served as staff lead on the current strategic plan, and co-scripted the 2010 Emmy award-winning Ounce of Prevention of Florida “Prevent Child Abuse” public service campaign.

PUBLICIST.
Along with working with independent authors such as Lee Matthew Goldberg, Hosho McCreesh and Senator Bill O’Neill, I also supported the emergence of one-time Chicago publisher Curbside Splendor, where I played an active role in the acquisition, launch, and/or promotion of a number of acclaimed books including May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks and Don't Start Me Talkin' by Tom Williams. More recently I worked with Green Writers Press on promoting a series of award-winning books including Finding God in Ordinary Time by Christine Eberle, Offline by Brian Adams and The Coffeehouse Resistance by Sarina Prabasi, as well as Woodhall Press on books including Four Funerals, No Marriage by Mike Keren, The Body Joyful by Anne

Poirier and Fast Funny Women, edited by Dr. Gina Barreca.

PODCASTER.
I produce and host This Podcast Will Change Your Life (300+ episodes and counting), which was launched in February 2010, focuses on authors and changemakers from around the country and the world, and was named by Elephant Journal as one of "The 10 Best Podcasts to Help you Change your Life." I produced UPSTATE: The Podcast, a serialized podcast (which includes a range of readers from my personal and professional lives) of my short story collection UPSTATE. I also produced and co-hosted The Blank Slate Podcast with Sam Tanios, which focused on small businesses owners, the pandemic, being nimble and engaging in a dialog about what’s possible now, where to find hope, and what can be accomplished if we work together.

WRITER.
My work includes the short story collection UPSTATE, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. I'm a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival Nonfiction Prose Award and a Midwest Book Award, and I've received an Honorable Mention at the Chicago Writers Association Book Awards for Traditional Non-Fiction and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. I've also written for Hemispheres, Punk Planet, Men’s Health, and The Arrow, AARP’s GenX newsletter. My forthcoming novel The Missing will be released in Spring 2024 by 7.13 Books.

AND.
And I help people tell their stories.

Amidst all of the sadness and horror there is this, UPSTATE, a refresh, and re-release, of my short story collection The New York Stories.