Becoming Your Best Version

Batul Sadiq is the founder, owner and wardrobe stylist at BHS Image Consulting, in the Washington, D.C. area. She realized, as a young professional and mother, how image and style could be used as tools to communicate personal and professional goals. She was able to attract positions and experiences in which she was valued by, in part, honing in on her own authentic style, and ultimately made the decision to be in control of her own narrative.

Batul uses her experience to work with women to identify their personal style and guides them in curating a fun and functional wardrobe to enhance their lives, empower their spirits and achieve their goals.  BHS Image Consulting is the realization of a dream that started in the heart of the fashion district in New York City where she received extensive training from industry veterans and had the opportunity to collaborate with fellow creatives.  She continued her journey in the neighborhoods of San Francisco and learned the value of a holistic approach to the art of dress in addition to its impact on individuals, communities and the environment, around the globe.  

Her initial desire to support women at different stages of life and encourage them to strip themselves of the labels placed on them has grown with time.  "There is no budget, body type or image standard, but rather the unique needs of people looking to share their spark with the world," Batul says.  Since 2005, she has assisted women across the country from all backgrounds to reveal their most authentic selves through their wardrobe styling and image.  She helps women overcome roadblocks in their lives and recounts stories of clients who finally started feeling heard in their workplaces when they owned their authenticity and felt better about themselves, starting with identifying and owning their personal style.

Batul shares that we should employ the "teflon/velcro" technique of letting negative comments slide off of us, while holding onto the positive feedback we receive.  Her driving force for her entrepreneurship venture was to identify and stay true to her "why."  She gives herself permission to be her best and affirms each day that she is deserving.  As are you.

Her time spent at the Fashion Institute of Technology and San Francisco State University, combined with her Asian American Muslim upbringing, has shaped her perspective on the way we dress and its impact on business, environments and people.  Batul also is an image consulting coach for Emerge Consulting Solutions, a member of Fashion Group International and a blog contributor at Mind Body Soul Sisterz, which brings together women who offer concrete steps to help us own our own authenticity and achieve our goals.

You can follow Batul's work at:

Website www.bhsimageconsulting.com 

Instagram: @bhs_image_consulting www.instagram.com/bhs_image_consulting/ 

Facebook: @BHSImageConsulting https://www.facebook.com/BHSImageConsulting/

Like To Know It: BHS Image Consulting https://www.shopltk.com/explore/BHS%20Image%20Consulting 

Pinterest www.pinterest.com/bhsimageconsulting 

LinkedIn: BHS Image Consulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/bhs-image-consulting/

Batul offered a free bra and measurement guide she created for viewers who can use it to solve their discomforts:  https://www.canva.com/design/DAFDgMkYFtI/fr-Zx5_clsBcG1dDFVIAKA/view

Jodi Silverman helps women embarking on the empty nest and midlife transition to rediscover who they are, outside of a mom, mother-figure, daughter or partner.  As a mentor and coach, she provides community, tools and strategies to increase resilience, find happiness, and discover purpose, meaning, fulfillment and fun.

Jodi helps women shift the focus that may have been on everyone else back onto themselves.  She shares her best tips and strategies, learned from her own daring and continuing journey, to help women release fear and limiting beliefs, preventing them from stepping into their purpose and living their most daring life now.  She has inspired thousands of women around the country through her coaching programs, Moms Who Dare® Membership Community, "In the Nest with Jodi" show and as a sought-after speaker.  Jodi has been featured in CEO Mom Magazine, This Is It Network and on a variety of podcasts.

Her mantra is "Dare On!" It has become a rallying cry for those in her community to embrace what is next in their lives. She encourages listeners to cultivate happiness for themselves, to practice the pause and release judgmentalism, and continually decide what would best support your own self-growth.  Jodi believes we should never be finished with our own personal growth, as do I.

Learn more about her work and offerings at the links below.

Website:  https://jodisilverman.com

Moms Who Dare Private Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/momswhodare.fortheemptynester

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodisilverman/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jodi_silverman/

"In The Nest with Jodi" on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/inthenestwithjodisilverman

Emily Clement helps people reclaim their personal power and manifest the lives they truly desire. She is a soul-searching joy-creator with a passion for helping others shine. Emily is an inspirational speaker, certified transformational life coach, educator, workshop facilitator and emotional wellness/healthy boundaries expert.

Emily was a student of life and business strategist, Tony Robbins, and now works behind the scenes at his events. She will travel with him to New Zealand and Fiji this year to work on another of his events.

Emily pivoted from being a full-time teacher (she taught at an all boys middle school as well as at a men's prison, to give a voice to the voiceless) to becoming a full-time life coach. Because of these experiences, she can "hold your hand and kick your ass," she quipped.

Emily's work led her to observe that therapy typically is about learning the backstory to determine how a client became who he or she is, whereas coaching focuses on who one is now. She prefers working as a coach to being a therapist because she believes that every time you tell your old story, you recreate it, and she helps clients understand that their history does not dictate one's future. We all can let go of our old stories. She helps clients define what they desire and to identify fears and blockages to achieving what they want. Emily views her client's job as determining what exactly they want. Then they can work on how to get it. She notes that we often are familiar with what is comfortable, but encourages listeners to flirt with the edges of their comfort zone, as a way to build confidence.

She earned a teaching certificate and B.A. in psychology from Wheaton College and a M.Ed in counseling from Plymouth State. Emily has taught and traveled all over the world. As a certified life coach, she has integrated her favorite elements from the best of her life experiences---teaching, counseling, speaking, meeting new people, building community and effecting positive change.

Learn more about her work at emilyclementlifecoach.com, where she offers free workshops on boundaries and personal freedom, mindset and manifestation.  Emily also offers free connection calls to explore where you are and where you want to be.

Follow her on Instagram and Facebook at @emilyclementlifecoach.

Margit Novack is an entrepreneur, thought leader in aging and pioneer in Senior Move Management. Margit founded Moving Solutions in 1996, when she was in her 40s. Over the next 25 years, her passion and commitment to serving older adults and their families inspired her team to provide world-class service that earned her awards and national media attention in this then-new cottage industry. She had no direct experience in the field at the time she started her company, but saw a need and sought to serve a vulnerable population.

Margit is widely recognized as founder of the Senior Move Management industry. She is the Founding President of the National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers (NASMM), chaired the NASMM Ethics Commission and developed industry training. NASMM recognized Margit’s commitment and service by creating the Margit Novack Award for Excellence in Senior Move Management.

In 2020, Margit left the formal work world and began a new role as author, speaker and champion of a re-visioned picture of aging. Squint: Re-visioning the Second Half of Life is her first book, which she wrote during the Covid pandemic. Her book is an uplifting guide for the second half of life. Margit’s memoir opens our eyes to the abundant possibilities of later life. She pairs profound and memorable personal stories with larger themes -- downsizing, caregiving, forgiveness, estrangement and more -- and shows that with the right perspective and “re-visioning,” the future is rich with possibility. Realistic, compassionate, substantive and uplifting, Margit’s Squint is a guidebook that leaves us better equipped for the years ahead. She believes that "life will never get better than it is right now," and believes the statistic that a positive outlook can increase one's lifespan by seven years. She notes that, sometimes, we don't know what we are passionate about, and encourages listeners to be on a journey of uncovering your passions, which may change over time. At age 72, she recognizes her desire to be part of a team, so she started a "mitzvah team" of friends to make a difference in her community. She and her team have collected socks for shelters at long term health care facilities, for example. She believes in living with intention, as opposed to a "I'll see what happens" approach, and preaches about the value of intentionality in her book and during public speaking engagements.

Kudos for Squint:

“Telling it straight about aging and more, it’s a must read, and a must have, for an enlightening and joyful journey.”

“A delightful and poignant journey through the common experiences of the second half of life.”

Margit grew up in Philadelphia, went to the Philadelphia High School for Girls and has graduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a great gardener, terrible cook and enthusiastic walker. Margit lives with her husband and three dogs (a retired Greyhound racer and two puppy mill rescues), and divides her time between Philadelphia and Maryland’s eastern shore, where she loves kayaking upwind.

To learn more about Margit and her memoir, Squint, please visit www.margitnovack.com, and follow her at:

facebook.com/margit.novack

nstagram.com/margit.novack/

twitter.com/MargitNovack

linkedin.com/in/margitnovack

Learn more about host, Maria, at www.MariaLeonardOlsen.com, and follow her at @FiftyAfter50.

Danielle Glosser is the Principal of Client Raiser, a business dedicated to helping artists to increase their client volume and the visibility of their art. Since 2014, she has worked with nearly 200 artists in 20 states across the country in support of their professional goals. Danielle also assists art collectors in exposing them to new work and finding pieces that bring them joy.  She has hosted unique online art exhibitions that have benefitted nonprofit organizations and struggling artists during the pandemic, and brings a passion for social justice to her work. Danielle supports women in the arts and increases exposure of work by artists of color.

Danielle’s expertise in strategic planning, project management, research, writing and networking comes from years of working and building relationships in the private, nonprofit and government sectors on social justice issues from inner-city schools in Oakland, California to The White House. She has had several careers, including doing marketing work for the NBA, which have informed her work today on behalf of artists. These professional opportunities — coupled with her personal belief that the arts are central to igniting conversation and enhancing human understanding — moved her to help artists with the business elements of their practice and to share their work with the world.

Danielle is a 25+ year resident of Washington, D.C. She has led workshops with over a dozen arts organizations, including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, ArtTable, Maryland Institute College of Art, Hamiltonian, Transformer, Washington Project for the Arts, Halcyon, Superfine Art Fair, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Gateway Arts District, VisArts, Washington Sculptors Group, Women’s Caucus for Art, Artomatic, District of Columbia Arts Center, Montgomery Arts Association and Capitol Hill Arts League. She is also a member of ArtTable, which is the leading organization for professional women in the visual arts. She is passionate about art and amplifying artists' voices, and has helped many art collectors and artists fulfill their professional and personal dreams.

Danielle offers complimentary sessions to artists and art collectors. Here’s a link to sign up: https://www.clientraiser.com/contact and to learn more about her work.

Rachel Strabley is a Certified Consulting Hypnotist through the National Guild of Hypnotists in Nashua, New Hampshire. Rachel studied at the Yale University's The Science of Well Being program. She began her study of hypnosis to help with her own depression and sleep problems, and now uses hypnosis and other modalities to help her clients, who are in the U.S. and abroad. Her youngest child uses Rachel's hypnosis recordings to help her fall asleep!

Through hypnosis, clients are able to overcome a lack of confidence, decrease or eliminate fears and phobias, address weight issues, low libido and menopause symptoms, improve relationships with themselves and others, release beliefs that block success, and reduce or eliminate old pain and recurring illnesses. Rachel's primary focus is to guide female entrepreneurs to level up their businesses.  She has enabled numerous businesswomen to increase their profitability and confidence, and to improve their lives overall.  She also has helped athletes improve their performances in their sports of choice. Conducting emotional detoxes with her clients--enabling them to release emotions subconsciously held since childhood--also is part of her practice.

Rachel conducts group hypnosis sessions, like a recent offering to a group of realtors to help them improve negotiating skills and attract clients.  She notes that, because one receives only what one is willing to receive via hypnosis, participants take what serves them individually during group sessions.

Rachel encourages us to follow our intuition, to ask the universe for what we want and need, and to listen when something gets in the way.  When the student is ready, the teacher will come.

Some of Rachel's fantastic offerings on her website, like her "Mini Hypno Boosts," are free.  Learn more about Rachel's work at https://hypnosiswithrachel.com/ and follow her at the links below:

IG:  https://www.instagram.com/hypnosis_with_rachel/

FB:  https://www.facebook.com/HypnosiswithRachel/

LI:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-strabley-42799a/

Amikaeyla Gaston is the Executive Director and Founder of International Cultural Arts & Healing Sciences Institute (ICAHSI).  She is a force for change. Proclaimed as one of the “purest contemporary voices” by National Public Radio (NPR), Amikaeyla is a public keynote speaker, performer, educator, and author. She travels the world serving as a Cultural Arts Ambassador for the State Department and is the Founder of the International Cultural Arts and Healing Sciences Institute and co-Executive Director for World Trust Educational Services Organization. With over 25 years experience in the Behavioral Health arena, Amikaeyla has been bringing together artists and healers of all forms and specialties to promote healing and wellness through the arts & activism. She leads corporations, universities and organizations through cultural competency, restorative justice, and racial equity training designed to facilitate, engage and support people in exploring challenging conversations. She does expansive work with political refugees, war survivors and at-risk populations worldwide and is often called into difficult scenarios to offer inter-cultural literacy and deep restorative justice work in support of transformative and peaceful solutions. Her international program of public dialogue is designed to allow different traditions and nationalities to gather together and address issues concerning our communities at large. Her programming has been utilized by the Department of Health & Human Services, USAID, The American Psychological Association, SAMHSA, and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, taking her around the world doing peace work in Israel, Beirut, Amman, Damascus, Palestine, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, just to name a few. Appearing internationally on television, radio and film, with appearances on PBS, HBO and in the Sundance Film Festival, Amikaeyla is the winner of twelve WAMMY Awards for Best Jazz, World and Urban Contemporary Vocalist, and is the proud recipient of the United Nations Global Woman Award, the Voss Foundation Emerging Women Leaders Award, the Pioneer Award for Exemplary Leadership and Outstanding Service in Social Justice and Advocacy and the International Hero for Peace and Forgiveness award. Her extensive studies with traditional healers and cultural artists around the healing effects of music led to the commemorative Golden Buddha performance at personal invitation by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in India.

Amikaeyla uses music as medicine to connect people and to practice cultural diplomacy. "When words defy us, music can touch our hearts in certain ways you cannot otherwise do," she says.  Ami recognizes the power of art as advocacy and has used her art to build bridges by appealing to people's emotions. Her stories are powerful and I feel blessed to have had this tremendous light and change agent on the Becoming Your Best Version podcast.

Amikaeyla grew up in Potomac, Maryland, and now is bi-coastal, with a home in the DC area and in California.  She will be performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. this fall. 

You can learn more about Ami's work at www.Amikaeyla.com and follow Amikaeyla on social media at @amikaeyla and @Amikaeyla Gaston.

Lisa Lucca is the author of Ashes to Ink: A Memoir, a story of heartache and the power of forgiveness, about her narcissistic father who came out as gay, and mother who did not want people to know, in their midwestern town, that she was the straight partner of a gay man. Lisa co-authored an epistolary memoir, You Are Loved, with her partner, Mark Mathias. Her memoir with her husband is a beautiful love story, told over the course of ten years via emails betwee the two that delved into life's biggest issues and the choices that shape our lives.  She also was a #Blogher17 Voice of the Year Honoree (for her blog piece, "Two Roofs, One House"), and is published in several publications and anthologies, most recently in the collection, Crone Rising.

Lisa’s weekly public radio show, Live True, has streamed globally since 2019. Her fifteen-year career in the entertainment industry included positions at LucasFilm and in production management on a world tour with Janet Jackson. She reinvented her life during the time in which she was a single mother, and became a life coach when laid off after 9/11. "To make a living, I became a life coach," Lisa says. "To make a life, I opened my dream palette to do my radio show and writing." While acknowledging that change can be scary, Lisa believes that it is more painful to live a life you hate than to search for a life you love. She left her first husband with only $100 in her pocket and with a three-year-old son, and never looked back. She is flourishing in the southern New Mexico desert mountains by living a creative life. Her coaching and speaking focuses on empowering women to live true to who they are, especially in mid-life and beyond. "Do you want to be an 'older woman' or an 'elder woman,'" Lisa asks.

Lisa believes that, in our 40s, we learn more about who we are, in our 50s we practice being who we are, and in our 60s we come into our third chapter, in which we can be the creators who no longer settle for less than we deserve. If we do not create--whether it is a garden or a community or something elese of ourselves--we fester. "All of us have the need within us to create something."

Lisa Lucca (she/her)

lisalucca.com

Facebook: /lisaluccawriter

Instagram: @lisa.lucca

Twitter: @lisaluccawriter

Julia Roberts, MSc, helps thousands of writers every year see their creative process more clearly and master their strengths and struggles. She is on a mission to help writers glide past those awkward, painful moments that can stop your writing in its tracks. She can help you stare down doubt, dread and delay, and write with more ease and satisfaction.

Julia's new book, Write Without the Fight: Master Your Creative Process to Write with Ease and Satisfaction, was launched in May 2022.  With this book, Julia helps writers gain confidence and creativity in their writing. She taps into the surprising science of creativity to give the reader grounded, proven, easy-to-use methods to find clarity, ideas, structure and to finish their work.  She shares her personal experiences, and those of her clients, with creativity, writing and publishing.

Julia is performing a TEDx talk: “It’s Not Just Mojo, The Surprising Science of Creativity” in Summer 2022.  She is also the author of Sex, Lies & Creativity – Gender Differences in Creative Thinking, (Difference Press, 2014), has her Masters of Science in Creativity, and is a trained and certified Life and Creativity coach.

Learn more about Julia's work at https://www.decodingcreativity.com/, follow her on Instagram at @juliadecodes and join her private Facebook group, Write Without the Fight.

Hara Allison is a storyteller through photography, design and her podcast, "See Beneath Your Beautiful."  On her podcast, guests share stories of adversity and perseverance which inspire, encourage and challenge us. Hara embraces these tough conversations, intimately exploring our loves, fears and hopes with a delicious combination of depth and lightness. One of her most impactful podcast episodes aired on 9/25/21:  "Motherless Daughters." Hara interviewed a dozen women who lost their mothers about the impact the loss had on them.  Hara has found that talking about one's pain can free us of it. 

Despite a traumatic childhood, including sexual abuse at a young age and her mother passing away at the age of 46, Hara finally found her worth and wishes that others see their own beauty and the light they were meant to shine. Hara said it took her 52 years to be able to confront her feelings of low self-worth. She also shared that, the more she parented, the more she was able to forgive her parents.

Hara's clients believe in her ability to tell their story. From that vulnerability and trust comes honest images that make them feel understood and confident. She calls it an "honor, every single time" to photograph her clients.

Her "See Me" photography series is a compilation of arresting photographs of women with the words they self-selected to describe themselves hand-painted on their skin. The 25 women photographed, many of whom she had never met, shared why they claimed the words they chose, and what they were willing to say out loud.  Hara believes that is what is beautiful about a person is the light that shines through them, not their physical characteristics. It shows in her work, and particularly in the See Me series.

She also has volunteered to photograph people who are dying. It was beyond her comfort zone, initially, but she wanted to witness them. "All I ever wanted was to be seen," she reflects. 

Most importantly, Hara is now open to not knowing. Hara questions everything she thinks she knows. "There could be another answer," Hara says.

For more information, check out the links below.

Photography: https://hara.photography/

Podcast: https://seebeneathyourbeautiful.com/

FB:  https://www.facebook.com/SeeBeneathYourBeautifulPodcast

IG:  https://www.instagram.com/hara_allison_photography/