Jean’s Storytelling
What are your dreams? Here are some of Jean’s.
Once upon a time, Jean was a young girl who wanted to grow up and become a foreign correspondent. She thought that would happen in the deepest heartland of Africa. In this vision she held for herself, there was a man, there were drums, there was soul-felt love, but Jean remained focused on getting the story.
On her eighth birthday, Jean’s older brother walked her down to the corner store about five blocks from their home on Seattle’s Capital Hill, and bought her a notebook for writing. This notion of Jean “being a writer” was now validated, and she set about her first set of journalistic work: describing two lovers she saw kissing in Volunteer Park; exploring her thoughts about religion, chronicling sibling conflict and injustice. This journal is still around today, stored in a cupboard inside a box labeled “sacred objects.”
While Jean never became a foreign correspondent, she did become a professional writer, who adventured all over the world, writing about her experiences, and interviewing others so she could write about theirs. She won awards for her work and along the way became a magazine features writer, a magazine editor, then a vice president of content, a really good content operations manager, dabbled as the lead singer in a rock band, and most adventurous of all, as any parent knows, a mother. Life changed and changed, but all the while Jean stayed engaged in actively chasing her dreams.
Now, these dreams include this business, and while a content strategy business may not seem adventurous to the outside observer, for Jean, CEO is a killer fit, and founding and running her own company feels about as freeing as the day she took nothing more than a couple of minutes during a surprise phone call from the owner of Geographic Expeditions, to answer, “Yes!” She would join, as a writer, their exploratory climbing adventure to Iran that was leaving the following week.
Jean thinks it is never too late for any of us to quantify and achieve our dreams, and takes great delight in inspiring and facilitating others to go for it. In that spirit, here’s what she’s working on now.
- Leading a successful content strategy company that helps others achieve their dreams by getting their message out to the world in the places they want it to be.
- Putting 100-percent effort into raising a child as best she can, in a world and culture that throws curve balls more frequently than Jean can find fixes.
- Other personal stuff that she’ll probably share in her blogs.
- Converting several concepts into fully published books. She’s in the middle of three books and one screenplay. Sound familiar? She will make it all happen, though it may take a while.
So that’s the story of Jean’s Storytelling. We hope you enjoy these fun pages of archives from adventures past.