Becoming Your Best Version

Brain health expert, Dr. Andrea Wilkinson, is helping people find focus, mental clarity and calm through a better understanding of how the body works. She has a Ph.D. in Psychology and has been researching brain health, wellness and mental resilience for the last 20 years. In 2014, she founded BrainShape.ca, a platform for adults who want to optimize their mental vibrancy and physical energy. Dr. Andrea is also the host of the BrainShape Podcast, a weekly show that covers the latest brain health research and shares tips on how to feel your best. Check out https://www.brainshape.ca/ for more information.

Ronit Plank is a writer, speaker, teacher and mother whose work has been featured in The Rumpus, The Atlantic, The Iowa Review, Writer’s Digest, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The New York Times and elsewhere. Her stories and essays have been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net and she is author of When She Comes Back, a memoir about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation. Her short story collection Home Is A Made-Up Place won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022 by Sowilo Press. She’s also creator and host of the award-winning podcast, "And Then Everything Changed," featuring interviews with authors, survivors and people in recovery about pivotal moment in their lives and the decisions that have defined them. She lives in Seattle with her family.  See https://ronitplank.com/ for more information and for links to her book, articles and podcast.

Barbara Ellison is a speaker, author, host, personality trainer, dream coach and wellness partner. She works with mid-life women who are ready to take charge of their lives so that they can be the best ever version of themselves--the full of energy, well-toned, confident and highly paid version.  Barbara is on a mission to make happiness the norm by inspiring people to lead happy, healthy, financially free, abundant lives.  Learn more at https://trendsinmarketingenterprises.com.

Patricia Lohan joins us from across the pond in Ireland.  She is a Feng Shui expert, manifesting magnet, alchemist, healer and real-life Irish Celtic Shaman. Patricia is the creator of PowerHouse Feng Shui and Author of The Happy Home: A Guide To Creating A Happy, Healthy, Wealthy Life. She helps entrepreneurs make their homes & businesses magnetic to money, luck and blessings. She shows you what they don’t teach in business school, what lies between the lines, your top-secret tool for success.  She has helped thousands of people across the globe embrace Feng Shui and create lasting changes in their businesses, homes and lives.  She likens Feng Shui as accupuncture for the home.  Patricia has seen first hand the power of the mind, surroundings and inner healing, clearing and aligning everything so it works holistically. She loves entrepreneurship, and has grown three successful startups of her own. Patricia has been featured in media around the world, including The New York Times, CNN, Forbes, The New York Post, She Knows, Essence, Mind Body Green, USA Today and Elephant Journal.  See https://www.powerhousefengshui.com for more information.  And a great tip she shared:  Ask people, "What's your good news?"  Everyone has something good in their lives.  And that which we focus on becomes magnified.  Let's join her good news movement!

Pleasance Silicki is an Ayurvedic Lifestyle Counselor, Holistic Health Coach, Rising Kohenet, Author, Death Doula, Inner Voice Facilitator and Adjunct Faculty at The American University and the Maryland University of Integrative Health. She teaches from the foundations of evidence-based Positive Psychology and weaves the practices of many wisdom traditions including Vedic Wisdom, Mystical Judaism, Earth-Based Rituals and ceremonies, and Somatic Healing. She is the founder of THRIVE, an online self-care class and LOLA, a dynamic community-based in sacred circles and teachings that cultivate liberation and awakening in daily life.

Cultural and commercial diplomacy are the hallmarks of Lauri Fitz-Pegado’s career. She has been a civil servant at the Voice of America and the U.S. Information Agency, and a Foreign Service Officer in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Appointed by President Clinton, she was confirmed by the Senate to serve as Assistant Secretary and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce led by Secretary Ronald H. Brown. In the private sector she advised countries, corporations, individuals and non-profits as a senior executive at Hill and Knowlton and Gray and Company, and as a partner at The Livingston Group. Lauri also was an executive at Iridium, the global mobile satellite communications company.  With a history of ballet training and performing with the Capitol Ballet, Vassar Dance Theatre and Ballet Santo Domingo, she now has returned to her passions by teaching ballet and mentoring. She applies her communications and public relations skills to promoting artists, and her business and leadership experience to advising dance institutions sharing her commitment to social change, empowerment, and inclusion.  Lauri received her B.A. from Vassar College, M.A from the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and speaks Spanish and Portuguese. She is grateful for the rich contributions her community of family and friends has made to her life story.  For more information, visit https://inthedash.live/.

Geeta Bakshi spent 14 years with the CIA doing counterterrorism work and focusing on the war in Afghanistan, bestowing upon her an enormous responsibility to help protect innocent lives from terrorist adversaries.  Geeta is a second-generation American of South Asian descent and the founder of FAMIL, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Afghan allies and their families resettle in the United States after the evacuation of American troops from Kabul in summer of 2021.  Geeta founded FAMIL, which means “family” in Afghanistan, to help Afghan allies of the United States, just as they had helped Americans in Afghanistan for so many years.  FAMIL is dedicated to assisting Afghan allies and their families in the United States.  They provide comprehensive support to Afghan families, with a focus on employment, education and integration.  Their vision is for displaced Afghan families to rebuild their lives, pursue their dreams and become contributing members of their new communities in the United States.  See www.familusa.org to learn more about her important work.

Alma Chopra is an entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, disabilities awareness advocate and life counselor, who has conquered Cerebellar Ataxia, a disorder that causes progressive loss of coordination and difficulties with balance and gait.  Her story is an embodiment of hope, faith and courage in times of darkness and overwhelming uncertainty.  Alma, whose name means "soul" in Spanish, wants her journey to serve as an example. "I am willing to show my vulnerabilities to the world. If it can inspire one person globally, my job is done." Learn more about Alma at her website, www.almachopra.in, and follow her on social media:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/almachopra

YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCspjHEVLhkfrxu-XJA7Y_gg

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chopraalma

Catherine Grace O’Connell is an Ageism Positivist, an Empowerment Cat-alyst, the founder of Forever Fierce: Midlife Matters, a global Facebook Community dedicated to supporting and celebrating the Modern Midlife Woman, and the CEO of MODlife Media, a female-focused message based digital media agency.  She is a Motivational Speaker and the host of the Mastering Modern Midlife Talk Show. Catherine is passionate about inspiring and empowering women at Midlife & Beyond to see aging in a positive light.

Women at Midlife & Beyond are the Perfect Storm. We are the first demographic in history to have health and vitality, wisdom and life experience, and a pocketbook to match. We are a fierce creative force balanced by compassion and empathy. Together, we control over 80% of the nation’s disposable income and it’s time we make our presence known!

Six years ago, her life looked vastly different. She was a woman who almost lost her life to late stage Lyme Disease, disempowered from decades of trauma and abuse. She had no self-esteem, no passion, no purpose and no future.  Her beliefs changed and her life began to dramatically transform. She let go of who she was told to be in order to become the woman she had always desired to be.

She has been on a deeply spiritual path for over 30 years. She has her Masters in Spiritual Psychology and a PhD from the University of Rise Like A Phoenix. She is an energy worker trained in many different modalities. She has studied with some of the top spiritual teachers, mystics and mentors who empowered her to understand true transformation happens from within. She didn’t have a tribe so she created one!

Our attitudes, beliefs, energy, patterns, and behaviors in the present determine our future. What we think and believe directly affects how we age. Through her life experience, she has become an expert at Mastering Modern Midlife and it’s her passion to share what she has learned with others.  See https://catherinegraceo.com/ to learn more.

Diane Papalia Zappa earned her PhD in Lifespan Developmental Psychology in 1971. She went on to teach human development courses to thousands of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, attaining the rank of tenured Full Professor of Child and Family Studies at the age of 30. While in Madison she and co-author Sally Wendkos Olds wrote A Child’s World (now in its 13th edition) and Human Development (in its 14th edition). In 1986, while still a Professor in Madison, she met Frank Zappa’s younger brother, Bob, who was marketing manager for one of her books. They married in 2015. Her latest book, The Married Widow, is available everywhere, and is her reflection on their relationship through the years. It is a beautiful and poignant love story, with inspiration for people who have lost loved ones.  See www.TheMarriedWidow.com and https://www.facebook.com/themarriedwidow for more information.