Tag: education

International Women’s Day Tribute: Got Core Values!

by standinlovejen, posted in Female Entrepreneurship, People, Purpose

“I want a positive, healthy learning environment for my child, and I will do anything to make that happen.  I believe every child deserves the right to thrive.” – Sandi Herrera, CEO Got Core Values!

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day tomorrow under the banner #BeBoldForChange, I am honored to celebrate the passion and vision of one relentless Las Vegas corporate-culture coach turned public school education advocate, Sandi Herrera.  Sandi is the CEO and founder of Got Core Values!, an innovative nonprofit organization whose mission is to transform the lives of children in the public school system through the development and implementation of core values and culture coaching for school administrators, teachers, and leaders.

Sandi shared her bold vision with me this week during a conversation over green smoothies at a neighborhood Starbucks.

Delivering Happiness Inspiration.

Sandi’s chance encounter with  Delivering Happiness  founder Tony Hsieh earned her the position of COO in 2009, heading internal culture and training for the organization.  Her skills in organizational and relationship systems coaching would reach new heights as she engaged C-level executives of businesses across the nation with the heart of Delivering Happiness: to inspire passion and purpose in the workplace for a happier world.  Through rigorous study of positive psychology and neuroscience research, Sandi and her team inspired the hearts and souls of workers around the world.   The world took notice, and so did the local Las Vegas community where Delivering Happiness runs its international operation.  Desiring happiness and positivity in their work environments, local schools began requesting this hybrid of consulting and coaching.

Internal Reckoning.

At the time Sandi was delivering happiness to executives in top corporations, she was pained by the challenges her own son faced in the local school system.  “School culture affects kids perceptions.  I’m not going to have my child feel like he’s a bad person just because he is not in a conducive learning environment.”   Sandi quickly found herself internalizing the core values of Delivering Happiness, whose number one core value is  “Be true to yourself. Live with passion and purpose.”  Could one mother impact the learning environment for her child and create a domino effect resulting in thriving educational environments for all children?

The answer… YES.

Leveraging her expertise and success in talent dynamics, culture coaching, and leadership  development, Sandi has worked fastidiously over the past four years introducing  Got Core Values! into six Clark County district high schools including Title 1 schools, like Mohave High School in North Las Vegas and magnet schools like West Career and Technical Academy in Summerlin.   Through rigorous piloting, testing, and measuring results, Sandi is ready to expand her culture coaching team and take on the valley’s vast network of public schools, with the goal of 30 implementing partners before the start of the school year this fall.

Ambitious Solutions.

Her passion and pursuit of transforming the public school system is not limited to coaching and introducing culture into the school climate.   It is extended to engaging local businesses to partner with schools in the district.

“Companies want to help so much, but often times they don’t know what to help with or how to help.”  Sandi’s mission is largely relationship driven: to break down barriers between schools and businesses with a focus on collaboration.  “Organizational culture is organizational culture.  There are nuances, but at the base of it all, we are all human beings.  And when we realize that we are both in the people business, that is how we will make progress and have momentum forward. ” 

Sandi believes there is tremendous power in the business community, and by partnering with a local public school, educators and business leaders will learn from each other, develop a new common language that will help them implement strategies for effective communication, leadership, culture, and relationship building from the top.  All of this will flow to the students, the future leaders and members of our communities. Sandi’s dream of core values and comprehensive positive sustainable cultures in our schools does not stop in Las Vegas.  Her sights are set on replicating this coaching methodology nationally and globally.

I have witnessed Sandi’s compelling work first hand.  Her determination and pointed focus on the goal of delivering core values to schools for the benefit of the team, students, and neighboring communities is nothing shy of remarkable.  She is living the #BeBoldForChange motto and serves as an inspiration to us all as we celebrate International Women’s Day 2017.

LEARN MORE

If you are an educator, administrator, business leader, or concerned community member inspired by Sandi’s story, please contact Got Core Values! to learn how to contribute your time and talent in the local community.

You may also follow Got Core Values! on Facebook for updates.

Happy International Women’s Day to all my beloved friends around the world inspiring change everyday!   #StandinLove #IWD2017 

Say Yes to the River

by standinlovejen, posted in Passion

The river is everywhere.  – Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Rivers inspire.  Rivers give way and rivers give life.

Rivers are part of the life-giving water cycle:  incessantly moving, shaping, and transforming.   Cleansing rivers have beginnings and ends, like the famous Jordan River,   washing away the sins of ancient believers emptying them into the Dead Sea where life ceases to exist.   Powerful rivers, like the Colorado River, channel wild, rushing water and carve beautiful canyons and deep valleys.  Melodic rivers, like famed Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s Serenade in E Major, relax our senses and guide us into calming, soothing waters.

A river is like an opportunity,  beckoning our hearts to listen.   Like rivers, opportunities come in all shapes and sizes.

I heard the concept of saying yes to the river by CEO and cofounder of Beadforlife, Devin Hibbard, during a recent podcast interview with MergeLane cofounder, Sue Heilbronner.   Her firm discovers, invests in, and accelerates great women and the companies they run.

Saying yes to the river for Hibbard meant heeding the call to begin a heartfelt journey with BeadforLife- a global NGO whose mission is providing sustainable opportunities for women to lift their families from poverty by creating a circle of exchange that enriches everyone.    Women in Uganda create beautifully hand-crafted paper beaded jewelry and engaged volunteers and advocates create markets for the sale of their goods.  Proceeds are directly reinvested into program expansion initiatives.

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Beifa Nighty, places finishing touches on the Radiance Collection Necklace.                                By: http://www.standinlove.org

In 2004, Devin,  Torkin Wakefield-Devin’s mother and former peace corps volunteer-and Ginny Jordan, said yes to the river that is now known as BeadforLife.  What started 12 years ago as an intention-setting meditation has grown into an active,  global movement placing entrepreneurial training directly into the hands of the world’s most impoverished women. The scale and depth of this work is unprecedented as evidenced by the recent expansion into six African nations outside Uganda including Burundi, Rwanda, and Kenya.  This hands-on, mobile classroom approach, aptly dubbed the Street Business School, provides tailored business training through a successful network of implementing partners. Devin’s ambition and belief underlie her goal of reaching one million women by 2027.

Challenges

Saying yes to the river does not come without challenges as Hibbard points out.  “We are and continue to be a learning organization”, she shared when asked how an entrepreneur without formal “business” training has achieved this level of success in her organization.  She added,  “We felt like this was something the world wanted us to do…and athough we didn’t have the right CVs to pull it off, we said ‘who are we to say no to the universe when it is giving us something’.”

Hibbard combines a passion for social entrepreneurship and international development with a network of engaged supporters,  worldwide donors, and a team of devoted colleagues working in Kampala, Uganda, and Boulder, Colorado, the nonprofits’ U.S. location.

Devin is not the only one who says yes to the river, exercising courage and plunging feet first into the deep, often unknown future.  The Street Business School encourages its participants to say yes to the river– the river of fresh opportunities where chances at renewed life replace the familiarity of poverty, dependence, and social exclusion.  The members of Street Business School, often rural subsistence farmers living on $0.60 a day, are challenged to trust not only the program’s leadership and it’s initiatives, but also- themselves.

Belief

Saying yes to the river for a vast majority of BeadforLife members means learning to read and write, and courageously stepping into a mobile classroom environment joined by neighbors and strangers from familiar socio-economic backgrounds as well as women who have successfully transitioned from poverty to economic independence.  The program graduates serve as mentors while lending credibility to the program’s effectiveness.

BeadforLife resembles a braided river,  whose multiple channels connect flowing streams of believing, compassionate individuals.  The river’s source- LOVE.

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Ariel view of New Zealand’s braided Dart river located in picturesque Glenorchy.                   By: http://www.standinlove.org

When was the last time you thought about saying yes to the river?