Gina Guddat is a licensed mental health therapist in Seattle, Washington.  She works with individuals, couples, teenagers and families locally as well via Skype and telephone and she loves the diversity of her clients. One of her specialties is working with teenage girls. She spent about fifteen years traveling the country working with them in the area of nutrition, exercise, dating, healthy friendships, and future goals.

Gina also enjoys working with couples on relationship issues. She helps them take a look at their communication style, conflict resolution, and how they can join together as a team. When she starts a therapeutic relationship with a client she wants to know where it is that they are going and what their goals are; she is very solution focused. Gina says, “In today’s age we don't have five years to do therapy and so I want to get to the point and give them some tools as quickly as possible and be very positive.” Gina takes a holistic approach to overall health. With a strong background in fitness she combines both physical and emotional health. She believes it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by bad habits and negative thinking that interfere with the quality of our lives, but as much as we try, she says our own efforts to change self-defeating patterns are sometimes ineffective. Gina has offered humanitarian services in many countries such as India, Africa, Mexico, and Vietnam, just to name a few. She has also been featured in the news on ABC, CBS, NBC and much more. She has earned a leadership award through the President's Council on Fitness in Washington D.C. and she has also been recognized as the Woman of the Year with the National Association of Professional Women.

Jake Hanes, owner of several CPA firms in Washington. Jake leads a team of professionals to successfully operate his practice year round. Have you ever wondered what a CPA does after that busy tax season?  Well, for Jake the offseason is spent in the outdoors with his family, conducting public speaking engagements, providing leadership and resources to local boards, and offering ongoing business coaching to his firm's clientele.  As a public speaker and a successful entrepreneur, Jake delivers high energy messages that motivate people to take action in life and build highly successful businesses. Jake has been coaching business owners for more than 14 years in every facet of operating and growing their businesses. He has succeeded as well as failed in business and he shares those experiences, concepts and tools so his audiences can use to can take a five year leap into achieving business success.

Gene has run several businesses including his own independent insurance agency. A long-time member of Toastmasters International, Gene has achieved the highest award, Distinguished Toastmaster, 3 times. In 1992/1993, Gene served as the District Governor for Toastmasters in his district, the state of Oregon and SW Washington , which is made up of roughly 160 individual clubs and about 3000 members. That year the district was #3 in the world and became the Presidents Distinguished District. Also, in 1991, Gene was the number 1 recruiter of new Toastmasters in the world, out of about 180,000 people worldwide and achieved this honor by recruiting 107 new members that year. He has started dozens of new Toastmaster clubs around the state; this has provided the emphasis for I Take The Lead, Inc.

Design/Build Construction Team.

Melody has always been creative, and for over 20 years worked as a graphic designer for several companies. She has an eye for detail and color and loves to collaborate with clients who need a little help discovering the best fit of fixtures, tile, wall color and other elements that contribute to an overall living space. Melody is an accomplished textile quilt artist. She takes great satisfaction in working with Wally to bring quality design, construction resources and experience to their clients’ lives.

Wally started Fosmore Construction Inc in 2004 because he is passionate about high quality construction and remodeling, and has since grown a satisfied group of customers through word-of-mouth referrals. Wally is a journey level electrician, a certified HVAC technician and welder. He has worked on multi-million dollar projects as a facility manager for the local community colleges and has worked with numerous architects and engineers. He loves to build, and more importantly, loves knowing our company is improving the lives of our clients!

Noel was a practicing chiropractor for 42 years and has been a chiropractic coach and consultant for 28 years. Five Star Management, The New Patient Academy and Sound Chiropractic Centers serve the chiropractic throughout North America, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Janel  understands Small business development, Marketing, Community Partnerships, and much more.  She has been president of a Rotory club and is currently a broker for Windemere real estate and owner of Emerald City Smootie.

Janel also has experience as a president of The Highline Schools Foundation for Excellence. The foundation was established in 1999 with the purpose of providing community resources to help Highline Public Schools succeed. We believe that by helping to enrich the classroom and school experience, we can engage students to reach a higher level of learning, and the entire community will benefit. 

Lacey has a marketing background in the nonprofit, hospitality, and events industries… which comes in handy when it comes to running a winery. She discovered the Lake Chelan Valley when she came here to assist with the opening of The Lake House (a condo resort) in downtown Chelan. They’ve dreamed of Chelan ever since and made that dream come true in the summer of 2012. Along with helping in the cellar at harvest, bottling, working the tasting bar, sweeping the floors, and washing the glassware, Lacey is the guru behind all of the marketing and promotions that it takes to keep Cairdeas Winery going.

Marla is an intuitive life, business and success coach, visionary, and speaker manager. My gift is guiding clients to solutions that are perfect for them whether it be on an individual basis, team basis or for organizations and associations. Marla's passion and niche is her intuitive ability to clearly understand the issues her clients are facing and to develop and recommend relevant, practical and targeted tools and solutions that directly address their specific needs.

Marla has held progressively responsible leadership positions and was a key team player in helping grow a $12 million dollar company into a $2.3 billion dollar global company while building extreme customer loyalty. Her extensive professional background in leadership, strategic planning, human resource management, training and development, project/product management, marketing, customer solutions, consulting, coaching, and speaker management makes her uniquely able to understand and address issues across a wide variety of people, teams and organizations.

Ruth E. Nicholson:

International Association of Facilitators (IAF) Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF), visual and graphic facilitator, Certified Assessor, and trained mediator in private practice in Snohomish County, Washington. She is also a member of the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (USIECR) roster. I hold a master’s degree in public administration and offer over 20 years’ experience in organizational development, facilitation, conflict resolution, public policy, and non-profit organization management.

Nicholson Facilitation & Associates is a woman-owned private practice.

Ruth's passion is helping people build the relationships necessary to develop sustainable agreements.

Sherry helped found the Seattle chapter of Keiretsu Forum in 2005. In her first year she was able to bring in more than a third of the new members. She rejoined the organization in 2010 and now focuses on membership, retention, committees and the charitable foundation. Sherry has helped grow Keiretsu Forum Northwest to over 200 new members, facilitating over $24 million for 36 companies in 2011, over $20 million in 34 companies in 2012, over $21 million in 35 companies in 2013, and we are currently over $14 million in 18+ companies this year. Sherry has assumed a new leadership role as President and continues to work on membership development, new chapters, and our amazing team.

Sherry has experience in both engineering and sales. In her past, she held engineering positions at SpaceLabs Medical, Zetron, Honeywell, Solectron and Qualitel. In 2003, she joined American Electronics Association (AeA) as the Washington Council Director of Membership Development. During her six years with AeA, she was consistently in the top three for sales and retention nationally. Because of her strong relationships with executives, Sherry was later hired by WTIA as Membership Development Manager and continued her strong performance serving members.

In all of her professional roles, she has worked with senior executives within the technology industry as well as other industries, including finance, legal, marketing, education, and the start-up community.
From 1982 to 1990, Sherry served in the U.S. Army and held a top secret clearance. She is also active in the community and serves on the Lake Washington Institute of Technology Foundation Board, Washington First Robotics Board, is a Seattle 4 Rotarian serving on the International Service Committee and the Boys and Girls Club Committee, She is a Celebrity Waiter fund raising for the Millionaire Club Charity and speaks for several other charity organizations.

Sherry has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering Technology from ITT Technical Institute, graduating with highest honors.

Sherry speaks four languages (English, German, French and Spanish) and is a tri-athlete.