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Houston, TX – Memorial Day Weekend means family gatherings and sometimes, family strife. But clear communication and thoughtful strategy can reduce family squabbles. KoonsFuller, P.C., Family Law is pleased to announce the opening of their Houston office, with Sherri Evans as Managing Attorney in the new location.
Houston family lawyer and divorce attorney Sherri Evans is a 1992 graduate of Tulane Law School in New Orleans. She is uniquely qualified to analyze and litigate complex property cases in a divorce, with a reputation as a dynamic litigator. Evans holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Texas in Austin and worked as a financial analyst prior to entering law school. She is also Administrative Chair and faculty member of the Family Law Trial Institute, an intensive 8-day litigation seminar focusing on advanced family law issues such as business valuation.
Evans is board certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and licensed to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and the Supreme Court of Texas. She has repeatedly been named to the list of “Best Lawyers in America” and Texas Monthly Magazine’s “Super Lawyer.” Sherri Evans is also the Chair of the Family Law Section of the State Bar of Texas.
KoonsFuller has experienced attorneys with both the knowledge and the resources to serve clients in matters including complex divorce litigation; property settlements of all sizes; marital agreements; asset tracing, valuation and division; child custody, possession and access, support and paternity; and trial and appellate work, as well as offering litigation alternatives such as mediation, settlement conferences, arbitration and collaborative law, across Texas and the nation.
Lake Lure, NC – Organizations are increasingly relying on the collective power of teams to meet today’s business demands, but many teams aren’t living up to their full potential. While teambuilding and sensitivity training workshops abound, they typically deliver little in the way of long-term impact, often because they overlook an essential factor driving team performance: thinking.
“With knowledge workers, you can’t develop and maintain an exceptional, consistently high-performing team without focusing first on what drives the team’s behaviors and actions at the root level,” says Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO of Herrmann International. “From our more than 30 years of research on the brain and business performance, we’ve found that when people come together, their ability to communicate, problem solve, and get the most from their diverse experience and perspectives starts with understanding how they prefer to think, both as individuals and as a group.”
Thinking style data, which reveals a number of important clues about how a team works, can be assessed and used as a starting point for discussions and activities, she says. Once team members understand the importance of a breadth of thinking and how each person’s thinking adds value, they are able to view differences in a nonjudgmental way, and they have new context for how to tackle the challenges that inevitably arise.
To make sure the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts, Herrmann-Nehdi says teams need to consider:
• To what degree does the team prefer analytical, structured, interpersonal or conceptual styles of thinking?
• How do these different modes of thinking affect team dynamics, process flows, idea generation and problem-solving approaches?
• How do they contribute to desired outcomes, and where are there gaps in our thinking?
• How can we use diverse thinking to move from conflict to creative contention?
In addition, leaders, OD professionals and others can apply the data to strategically align thinking resources with business objectives and challenges.
“When managed well, cognitive diversity has been proven to pay off,” Herrmann-Nehdi says. “A six-year study with the USDA Forest Service using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) assessment and Whole Brain® framework found that teams with a balance in terms of thinking preferences are more effective—they consider more options and make better decisions—and they’re more efficient than homogenous teams.”
The new white paper, Are Teams Broken? Or Just Not Using Their Heads? Team Thinking in a New Light, (at www.hbdi.com/Resources/WhitePapers/index.php) discusses how to apply the latest research on thinking and team effectiveness to achieve specific business objectives. The free download also provides tips for using a thinking-based framework to overcome common team challenges.
About Herrmann International:
The originator of the Whole Brain® system and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) thinking styles assessment, Herrmann International works with organizations around the world to help them put their full brainpower to work to outthink, outpace and outperform the competition. The company’s Whole Brain® Thinking framework, which includes a variety of learning solutions, facilitation resources, job aids and business tools, has helped 9 out of 10 of the Fortune 100 harness their collective intelligence to sell more, spend less, innovate faster, and develop and retain the best talent.
(Foreword by Allan “Bud” Selig, Commissioner of Baseball)
Tom Brokaw, Author and former NBC News anchor: “Jackie Robinson was a man of enormous resolve and dignity. He was not a patsy. Through all his trials, he always maintained his dignity. Jackie showed all of us how to be courageous and keep moving forward.”
Deerfield Beach, FL – How to Be Like Jackie Robinson (HCI Books-$14.95) is another dynamic book in the How to Be Like, a “character biography” series, which focuses on drawing out important lessons from the life of their subjects. Rather than just reviewing Robinson’s life in full, as so many books on his life have done, How to Be Like Jackie Robinson gives readers lessons and teachings from this remarkable man to take into their daily lives.
‘Everything Jackie’ seems to be the theme right now with the movie “42” hitting the #1 spot at the box office as celebrations take place to honor the 66th anniversary of his becoming the first black man to play in the major leagues. Jackie Robinson was not only one of the most extraordinary athletes of all time, he was a great man who lived his life with dignity and honor.
When Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field on April 15th, 1947, it was as the first African-American ever to play baseball in the major leagues. Robinson broke the “color line,” a segregation practice dating back to the founding of this country. Robinson was not only a baseball hero, but also an amazing agent for social change who played an invaluable role in the civil rights movement.
In this book, which is by far the most exhaustive in the series as it is based on more than 1,000 interviews, Pat Williams tackles one of the most influential people in recent history. Fans can see how Jackie Robinson became one of the most amazing athletes in baseball and how they can learn from many of his life choices and experiences.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Pat Williams is senior vice-president of the Orlando Magic and author of more than thirty successful books, including four books in the How to Be Like series.
Mike Sielski is Sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal. A graduate of La Salle University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he has won more than thirty local, state and national journalism awards and was named one of the twenty best newspaper people under age 40 in the nation by the Newspaper Association of America.
Available at bookstores or to order directly from the publisher, contact: HCI Books (800) 441-5569 or www.hcibooks.com .
How to Be Like Jackie Robinson: Life Lessons from Baseball’s Greatest Hero By Pat Williams with Mike Sielski ISBN: 0-7573-0173-8 $14.95 – Trade paperback
Albany, NY – Nurturing and making others happy seems to be an ingrained trait in most women. But when a woman is pushing herself too hard, destructive and self-sabotaging ‘girly thoughts’ arise that can wreak havoc on her success, both personally and professionally. Noted psychologist and author Dr. Patricia O’Gorman coined the term ‘girly thoughts’ in her latest book, The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI Books), to describe what happens when a woman ignores her own needs and tries to be everything to everyone.
‘Girly thoughts’ are being discussed a lot lately, albeit using various lengthy descriptions. The effects of these thoughts have been highlighted by a Facebook executive in her new book, discussed on various television shows, and even demonstrated in a Dove YouTube at: bit.ly/11hCsGS that shows how women see themselves in a far less attractive light than a stranger sees them. With nearly 50 million hits on this video, it seems that Dr. O’Gorman’s assessment of ‘girly thoughts’ is right on!
The Resilient Woman acts as a guide for women to uncover their inner power so they can challenge these thoughts and stop blaming themselves for anything that goes wrong in their life. Dr. O’Gorman provides the tools to help women learn how to find their own best solutions and stop the girly thoughts that tell them who they are, how they should act, and that hold them back.
Women often miss the path toward achieving their true potential because they have been conditioned to blame themselves for something someone else has done to them. “But with the right tools to break the cycle, they will learn to consciously harness and nurture their strengths and find the personal assets we often take for granted, realizing that a resilient life is generated not from the things that happened to us, but from our reaction to them,” says Dr. O’Gorman.
In O’Gorman’s book, readers discover resilience patterns established in childhood, how girly thoughts become so powerful, and how to neutralize them to become successful in all aspects of life. The author discusses relationship issues specific to women, how to overcome all types of trauma, how to self-motivate by losing the victim mentality, and offers methods for tuning in to the inner self and consciously align with personal strengths to expand personal power – showing what resiliency is and is not, and how to achieve it.
Dr. O’Gorman has become a sought-after speaker at professional women’s groups, where she connects with women who want to know how girly thoughts affect them in the workplace. She is also currently consulting with Lifescape Solutions in Delray Beach, FL, who are using her book to develop a resiliency-focused women’s treatment program.
An internationally recognized psychologist, coach, and public speaker for her work on women, trauma, and substance abuse, Dr. Patricia O’Gorman was one of the first researchers in children of alcoholics in the early 1970s and went on to create the Department of Prevention and Education for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. She is cofounder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics and has run a rape-crisis center. She has been a featured guest on Good Morning America, Today, and AM Sunday, to name a few, and is the author of numerous magazine articles. In addition to her private practice in Saranac Lake and Albany, New York, she is Chairperson of the Advisory Board of Horses Healing Hearts, Inc., an equine learning program for children of alcoholics. For more information on Dr. O’Gorman’s work or her latest book, please visit: www.patriciaogorman.com , where you can also find her blog: thepowerfulwoman.net .
Available at fine bookstores, online outlets and author’s website The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power by Patricia O’Gorman, PhD. Publisher: HCI Books ISBN-10: 075731709X ISBN-13: 978-0757317095
Hampton, VA – Dr. Carl O. Helvie was a relatively young man when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and told he had six months to live. Instead, he made a decision to fight back with something other than traditional medicine. And today, this healthy 80-year-old man takes no prescribed medications and is one of the longest living lung cancer survivors.
Helvie’s latest book, You Can Beat Lung Cancer: Using Alternative/Integrative Interventions (Ayni Books), gives all of us hope for a healthier future. “Harsh chemicals, devastating surgeries and painful procedures for conventional cancer treatment are not your only option,” Helvie explains. He offers practical, easy-to-understand information on the types, causes and diagnosis of lung cancer, how we as a society view nontraditional treatments, and evaluates different approaches to holistic and alternative treatments.
Helvie chose to use a wide array of holistic natural interventions: supplements, herbs, enzymes, diet, prayer and meditation. His doctors were astonished, but this combination meant Helvie was able to overcome his cancer and prevent any recurrence. Just as remarkable is his quality of life since the diagnosis of lung cancer. A holistic lifestyle has continued to produce results for him. He is healthy and takes no prescription drugs, while 89% of Americans over age 65 have some form of chronic illness and by age 75 can expect to have three chronic illnesses and be taking five prescribed medications daily.
Based on his 60-year career in medicine and research, You Can Beat Lung Cancer incorporates input from some of the leading medical and health practitioners in the field today. Helvie is determined to show there is another way to overcome cancer other than surgery, chemotherapy and radiation that can have debilitating side effects. Helvie is not surprised by the recent findings of a team of researchers in Washington State who found, purely by accident, that chemotherapy actually fuels the growth of cancer cells, making it more difficult to destroy the second time around.
A registered nurse with two masters and a doctorate in public health and wellness, Dr. Carl Helvie has decades of experience as a nurse practitioner, educator, author and researcher. He is the recipient of numerous awards with listings in Who’s Who In American Nursing, Men of Achievement, American Men and Women of Science, just to name a few. He has eight published books as well as being a contributor to others, and has published or presented internationally over 100 papers and articles. He developed and published a nursing theory now used worldwide and has established a nursing center that provides primary care for homeless and low-income individuals and families. For more information, please visit: www.BeatLungCancer.net .
Available at fine bookstores or online outlets You Can Beat Lung Cancer: Using Alternative/Integrative Interventions By Dr. Carl O. Helvie Publisher: Ayni Books ISBN-10: 1780992831 ISBN-13: 978-1780992839
Spring, TX – Leadership Expert Al Bolea knows that behavior drives potential. “If you act successful you are embracing the concept that you are successful and this can determine future possibilities,” says Bolea, Founder of Applied Leadership Seminars. His expert advice is based on research conducted by contemporary psychologists and neuroscientists. “Simply stated, when a person becomes aware of their behavior and changes it to adopt the behaviors of great leaders, they will become a great leader,” states Bolea.
Bolea offers an Executive Leadership Retreat, consisting of twelve participants (with a few positions still open), from August 11 – 16, 2013 in Alaska. This remarkable 5-day experience takes place on a guided fishing tour in the pristine waters of Alaska’s Inside Passage and combines the rigorous leadership theory with the expansive team experience of fishing in an area of natural wonders, which offers a rare opportunity for leadership teams to re-envision their organization’s future. Participants initially stay at the Cape Fox Lodge in Ketchikan then travel by sea plane to the Waterfall Resort, one of the finest remote sport fishing destinations in the world.
“What we learn in the meeting room they put into practice in the boats. If it works in the boats, it will work back at the office, plant or wherever,” says Bolea. “Anyone who has ever attended one of these retreats acknowledges that the experience delivers results at the bottom line.”
What makes Bolea’s seminars so special is that they are tied to real-life experiences; both his personal failures and successes as an executive. He doesn’t teach people about leadership; he teaches them how to lead and gives them the tools to do so. He nurtures their behaviors and opens up doors that allow them to discover their own new potential for themselves. The seminars are life-changing in that when attendees return to work their direction is clearer and more widely understood, stronger teams emerge, fewer mistakes are made and fewer opportunities are missed.
Founder and architect of the Applied Leadership Seminars, Al Bolea is an executive leadership coach whose clients come from many industries. His seminars are offered year-round and are designed as team experiences. Participants gain new leadership tools and build greater cooperation among the members, achieving lasting personal and professional transformations. Eleven seminar options range from 5 days in length for “Leadership Transformation” to a 1 day seminar for “Being A Leader.”
Bolea is the former CEO/GM of Dubai Petroleum and a retired BP executive. His industry career spans almost forty years, including assignments in the US, UK and Middle East. He lectures at the University of Houston, and is the Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Leadership at the University of Alaska.
For more information on the Alaskan Retreat or the success of Applied Leadership Seminars, please visit the website at: www.albolea.com .
Seattle, WA – With few Asian voices heard in Western literature, Disko Praphanchith is a talented young writer who is about to change all that! His debut novel, Courage: A Story of Love and Friendship (CreateSpace), is a powerful, character-driven story that addresses the social plight of women today and touches on issues that deal with domestic abuse, racism, the loss of love and friendship, regret, and morality. In a sophisticated and worldly style, rarely seen in a young writer, Disko challenges culture, society and ideology in an attempt to reconcile one’s individuality.
In Courage, the author skillfully weaves in fiction as a way to better understand reality. While the theme of the story is love and friendship, it focuses on issues universally discussed in our culture – gender, sex, identity and ‘femininity’ – but does so without immersing readers in fantasies of sparkling creatures or erotica. Courage does not follow the typical romantic genre of clichés; instead this often raw and gritty, in-depth story focuses on the true meaning of love and friendship; making it more a realistic portrayal of human psychology that rivals themes developed by the likes of Russian novelists Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
The backbone of Courage is the Interludes that are conveyed through one of its leading protagonists; scholarly essays, seasoned with pearls of wisdom, are interspersed throughout the novel. These Interludes analyze the world and critique American society – namely Hollywood, for imposing ideological and hegemonic structures on the individual and thereby eliminating their personal identity.
Courage chronicles the tale of two friends over the span of a lifetime; Jenny Park, a Korean-American girl whose search for her identity in this world alienates her from her Korean kinsfolk, and Daniel Fischer, an intense, thoughtful, and brilliant young man whose mind separates him from the rest of his peers. The two meet early in life and form a deep and loving relationship. As time passes, however, it is this very friendship that becomes their greatest source of pain, where an inability to voice their love for one another eventually drives them apart.
Many years pass and we see Jenny as a broken woman living under the tyrannical hands of her husband. Her life is hell, and each day is spent uselessly toiling away without meaning. When Jenny sees Daniel one night, memories of love and friendship stir deep in her heart. With these memories suddenly rekindled, Jenny flees from her husband, travels back into the world, and attempts to reunite with the boy she once loved and knew.
Heartrending and deep, Courage infuses an emotional rawness in examining human individuality in a world where personal identity is repressed. Disko Praphanchith does a superb job of painting a picture with words, vivid and real, of what it means to accept the inevitable loss of love and friendship in life—as well as what it means to simply love.
Born in Laos, Vientiane, Praphanchith moved to the United States as a young boy. He graduated from the University of Washington with numerous literary awards and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative-Writing and English. He is well-versed in subjects involving literary theory, post-structural discourse, critical practice, and philosophy. Currently working on his second novel, Chopin in the Library, the author resides in Seattle, Washington. For more information on this talented writer or his debut novel, please visit: www.diskop.weebly.com .
Courage: A Story of Love and Friendship BY Disko Praphanchith Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN-10: 1484169476 ISBN-13: 978-1484169476
