The Platinum Mask

At the age of 16, Bailey Reber was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. For years, she struggled with not only managing her mental illness, but also with accepting it while the outside world around her did not. She started the podcast she hosts, Distressed to Joyful; Bailey's Way, in order to help encourage others to seek any professional help they may need, especially in times of darkness. She hopes that being vulnerable on hard topics via her podcast will be a “beacon of light” for listeners who are currently struggling with similar situations. She also hopes to bring about new perspectives to those not directly affected by mental illness in order to help them understand the world with a kinder heart.

Melissa Thiel grew up in Grayson County, TX and graduated from Tom Bean High School. She received her Associate’s Degree from Grayson College and then went on to study at Texas Woman’s University where she received her Bachelor's Degree in History. Shortly after, she decided to continue her education and received her Master's Degree from Texas Woman’s University.  Mrs. Thiel majored in History with an emphasis on Public History. It was during her studies that she learned about the lynching of George Hughes and the 1930 Sherman Riot. She is happily married to her husband who is a veteran of the United States Air Force. They have three wonderful boys and reside in Gunter, TX.

Dena Nguyen is a graphic designer, digital artist, and content creator based in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. She currently works as a Jr. Art Director at a creative agency in Dallas, does freelance design work, and creates YouTube videos in her spare time.

Alōha fellow mindful wanderers! Christina and Patrick here, owners of Stay Zen Retreats. We love to travel and meet people from all over the world and look forward to connecting with you as a host or traveler. We have roots in western New York and south Texas, allowing us the great pleasure of spending time between both those points on the map. Each of our homes are inspired by our travels and designed with the mindful wanderer at heart. Simple, colorful and tasteful decor amidst comfortable and functional spaces where you can relax and unwind after a long day of exploring. Through compassion, mindful travel, conscious consumerism and simple living our mission is to spread love, kindness and inspire positive change; together we can all help to leave the world a better place.

To find out more about Christina & Patrick and all of their adventures, check out:

@themindfulwanderers

 @stayzenretreats

Originally from Washington D.C., Alexandra Farber is a mixed media artist with a passion for telling narrative.  Alexandra trained as a classical ballet dancer from a young age, a pursuit that took her to schools from DC to San Francisco, New York City, and Houston. She joined the Texas Ballet Theater in 2012 and has risen to a principal artist within the company where she continues to perform.  All the while, her creativity never stopped outside of the dance studio; she continued to create using other mediums in the visual art world. Alexandra pursued a Bachelor of Science in psychology through the University of Maryland Global Campus, graduating with honors.  Though she trained in classical drawing and painting while getting her degree, Alexandra's primary medium is collage.  Inspired by artists like George Herms, Fred Tomaselli, Lorna Simpson, and Dana Newmann, Alexandra uses found objects, including organic materials from nature, to tell the narratives of life, from the mundane to the dramatic.  Her choreography is the dance language collage of these ideas.

Alexandra Farber

[email protected]

@farbie

@alexandrafarber.art

www.alexandrafarber.com

301-655-6631

Infinite Greens is a small family business and was first established in 2017 cultivating hydroponically grown organic leafy greens and vegetables for sale to chefs and restaurants in the metroplex. With the passing of the 2018 Farm Bill, we decided to convert the farm over to the hemp/cannabis industry. Our mission is to provide Texans with Premium Texas Hemp Flower and Pre-rolls, as well as the highest-quality Artisanal CBD Edibles, Tinctures, and Topicals for all their health and wellness needs. All of our Hemp derived CBD & Delta 8 products are hand-crafted from premium small-batch Hemp flower grown and manufactured from our hyper-urban, indoor farm in Farmers Branch, Texas, which allows us to control all environmental factors and prevent the use of any chemicals, pesticides, or other toxic inputs. Infinite Greens strives to be a trustworthy and transparent source of Texas Hemp & CBD products for our customers, which is why all of our products are also third-party tested.

Terrance Thomas has dedicated his life to transformation. He believes that we all can change for the better. He grew up in Fort Worth Texas where he was often on the streets begging for money to support his mothers drug addiction. “Excuse me sir, could you help us to get something to eat or go buy us something?” These words transformed Terrance and were also part of the hustle that allowed his mother’s expensive addiction to continue. Terrance stayed with family members and friends as he grew up. Some way or another, he would end up on the cold streets of Fort Worth with ripped shoes begging for money whenever his mother was released from prison again and again. Terrance was embarrassed and had disdain for himself. That is until his youth minister Adam introduced him to the love of Jesus Christ.

In 2004, David was wrapping up his freshman year at Baylor University and started his first business.  His parents told him they would give him money towards his MBA or his first business, and he immediately took the seed funding and ran with it. By college graduation however, the company was not yet large enough to support a full-time salary, so David moved in with his sister who was working on her Masters degree.  He slept on a Coleman air mattress for 9 months on the living room floor and went on the road pitching investors to raise a round of funding. The first 40 investors turned him down and he was down to just $300 in savings with the reality approaching he was going to have to go out and get a job. He firmly believed that God had a plan and he had to just keep going. After nearly 100 pitches, five investors came on board and provided the $250,000 in funding required to grow the business.  The same day the round of funding was closed, his air mattress popped, and he was able to get his own apartment and buy a real bed.

Fast forward to today and David has started over twenty businesses (several of those with Boss Club co-founder Charlie Gasmire).  In 2012 David and Charlie co-founded Vendevor, an ecommerce software business which successfully sold to Payscape in July of 2015.

David’s recent successes include First Centurion Group which sold a variety of consumer goods from its own line of skin care products and work-out supplements and generated nearly $40 million in online sales and grew to over 50 employees and was one of the fastest growing start-ups in 2013.

November 2019 David sold Pegasus Fulfillment, to Selery Fulfillment, a Mark Cuban backed company.  Pegasus Fulfillment was a company he built with his father Mike Grubbs, which handled inventory warehousing and online order fulfillment for over a dozen different ecommerce businesses including his own.

With many startups under his belt David has learned there is a recipe to starting businesses which enables businesses to be launched faster and with less risk.  Those hard-learned lessons from nearly two decades were disseminated into a unique Entrepreneurship course he taught at Baylor University with Dr. Kendall Artz and Dr. Les Palich where 12 hand selected students were given funding to start real businesses over the course of a semester.  The program was a success and the core of Boss Club’s curriculum is based on all the principles taught in that college level course.

In his free time David loves flying (as a private pilot), riding horses, scuba diving, reading, learning Spanish, and participating in his church.  David lives in a small rural town in Costa Rica and is married to his wife of four years, Daniella, who runs her own not-for-profit equine therapy center to help people with disabilities.  Their first son, Sam, was born in 2020.

Rachel Weaver is the Education Director for SCRAP Creative Reuse, a national network of nonprofit creative reuse centers, and active in the Dallas-Ft.Worth-Denton metroplex as a writer, musician, and mixed media artist. Rachel advocates for environmental health, local resilience, and developing our environmental imagination. She seeks to build strong community relationships and foster opportunities for growth through education and creative learning. Rachel has cultivated relationships and skills through various community activities including environmental education, farming and conservation work, local market management and entrepreneurship, event planning, educational development, and nonprofit leadership.

Victor and Melanie, the creators of Korazon Clothing, took a leap of faith and launched during the pandemic of 2020. They decided to turn their passion for fashion and started this thing. They didn’t go to school for fashion or merchandise but were not going to let anything stop them. Victor and Melanie hired a life coach to give them the push they needed and now it’s up to them to keep the momentum going. Join them as they carry out their mission. Their mission in Korazon is to create quality pieces that will make every woman and man feel confident and beautiful. Victor and Melanie want to help break the toxic beauty standards and show what true beauty is! This is why they're intentional about having representation. They choose models with different ethnic backgrounds, sizes and shapes. They hope to help our generation and future generations feel confident and learn to love and feel confident in who they are!