The Morning Glory Project

Lucinda Jackson is the author of Just a Girl: Growing Up Female and Ambitious. As a scientist and business executive, Lucinda spent almost fifty years at three universities and four Fortune 500 companies where she experienced and witnessed the unequal treatment of women. This spurred her to write about how to change that dynamic and how to help women find their power.

After growing up in California, Oregon, and Washington, she received her Ph.D. in science in Illinois and continued speaking and serving on boards of academic, nonprofit, and industry organizations worldwide. After Peace Corps volunteerism in Palau and teaching science in Mexico, Jackson and her husband returned recently to their home near San Francisco where she enjoys her fantastic women friends, reading, exercise, and helping others. They are immensely proud of their three liberated sons who are scattered around the globe.

Grace Livingston is on a journey to find her voice as a writer and storyteller as she faces illness, loss, and all the other tragically beautiful things that make us human. Grace works as a Senior Researcher for Ten Percent Happier, a mindfulness meditation company, where she is currently helping founder and ABC News anchor Dan Harris on his forthcoming book code-named "10% Nicer." She is an active member of the Reimagine community, first as a volunteer and then as a performer and the host of multiple events for people personally facing illness.

Anna Stewart personifies the phrase “dedicated writer.” Since her first novella with Harlequin in 2014, Anna has written and published more than forty romances in multiple sub-genres. As a USA Today and national bestselling author she writes sweet to sexy romance for Harlequin's Heartwarming and Romantic Suspense lines with one of her titles, Recipe for Redemption, optioned for a TV Movie aired on Uptv in the 2019 holiday season. Early obsessions with Star Wars, Star Trek, and Wonder Woman set her on the path to creating fun, funny, and family-centric romances with happily ever afters for her independent heroines.

Laura Davis, author of seven bestselling non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal, I Thought We’d Never Speak Again, and forthcoming memoir, Wholehearted, teaches writing workshops in Santa Cruz, California, and leads transformative writing retreats in Tuscany, Peru, Bali, Spain, and other international locations. As the creator of The Writer’s Journey Roadmap, Laura sends out free evocative writing prompts by email each Tuesday.

As a gay Christian, Matt Nightingale is passionate about the intersection of sexuality and spirituality. He works to create safe, sacred spaces for people exploring these identities. His TEDx talk, “Choosing Gratitude and Hope,” with his former wife, Luanne Nightingale, tells their story of their 23-year mixed-orientation marriage, an evolving understanding of faith and sexuality, and the choice to end their marriage with gratitude and hope. When he first acknowledged his authentic sexuality, Matt believed he needed to be cured, and tried to do this in the confines of the church where he then worked. Eventually, he grew to accept his sexuality though it cost him his marriage and the job he held in his church.

Matt is now a spiritual director and support group facilitator with The Christian Closet, which offers web-based counseling, coaching, and spiritual direction for LGBTQ Christians.

Shannon Curtis writes and performs art pop music; Jamie Hill produces and creates music with all sorts of bands and artists. They're both writers and authors and speakers ... oh, and also, they're married!

As CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City, Karen Haycox has pulled from every aspect of herself, her history, her losses, and her talents to help her teams provide housing to those who might otherwise never have the homes they need. The lessons

she’s learned from losing one she loved, to embracing sobriety, and even her background in filmmaking all serve her now in the highly demanding role of

wrangling all of the entities and overcoming all of the obstacles required to create homes for others. Determination, talents, and wisdom gathered along turn out to be the perfect constellation of skills for doing exactly the work she never aimed for, but which she now knows she was meant to do.

Jen Pastiloff travels the world with her unique workshop “On Being Human,” a hybrid of yoga related movement, writing, sharing out loud, letting the snot fly, and the occasional dance party. Her bestselling book, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard is an exploration of her discoveries, confusions, wisdoms, and her striving for a zero BS way of life.

Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, calls Jen “a conduit of awakenings.” Jen has been featured on Good Morning America, New York Magazine, Health Magazine, CBS News and more for her unique style of teaching, which she has taught to thousands of women in sold-out workshops all over the world. Bring a journal, and open heart and the willingness to grow open and stronger for her workshops.

Seán Dwyer is a college professor, a songwriter, and the author of award-winning fiction and non-fiction. Just as the possibility of publishing his debut novel was on the near horizon, both his career in teaching and his future as an author were put on hold due to a shocking car accident. While stopped at a crosswalk, he was rear-ended at 50 mph and suffered two serious concussions in two seconds. His injuries have left him with challenging balance issues and light sensitivity and rendered him unable to read or write for more than moments at a time. After nearly five years, he has recovered from some of his symptoms, while others linger still. In part as brain therapy but also as emotional therapy, Seán wrote a memoir of his recovery, A Quest for Tears: Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury to provide support and information to other Traumatic Brain Injury survivors. .

After losing both of her parents in her early 20s, and much more of her small extended family over the following few years, Alanna McLeod got an early and up-close education about grief and loss. With the empathy and understanding she gained, Alanna became a founding team member of Reimagine End of Life, a nonprofit organization that encourages others to explore the otherwise taboo topics of death, dying, grief, loss, and mortality. By demystifying the topic of death, it is her belief that by preparing for a better end of life, we can live more fully while we are still here.