WISDOM ON TAP®

I’m a certified mindfulness meditation teacher, science geek, and an innate overthinker. As a lifelong artist and entrepreneur, I know the chaos that can go on in a human mind. After years of working with police, first responders, and private companies in crisis intervention, I created Wisdom On Tap® mental fitness training. I am not a mind reader nor a scientist, but brain science is embedded in my work sharing how to reset the mind for thriving, instead of merely surviving.  I teach fellow humans how to optimize the nervous system for living with purpose, creativity, and a sense of agency over our lives. This includes how we confront failure. I work with teams and communities on how to skilfully regulate thoughts and emotions, and catalyze each individual’s unique insight and authentic wisdom.

I offer curated team training in creative mindset and mindful leadership, including for humans who may not yet see themselves as creatives or leaders. We are all here on earth to create the life we wish for. As we lead our lives, we model for those around us. Creating and leading are part of thriving. I use concepts from my postgraduate studies in Interpersonal Neurobiology, Mindful Self Compassion, and from my own experience of finding resilience through my failures and setbacks. I have witnessed the life-changing benefits mindfulness practices can have on individuals and organizations as a whole. Minds wander off all day long, and I help people find them. It just takes practice.

RESILIENCE

In 2006, after a health crisis in my family, I stumbled upon the concept of mindfulness. It gave me a sense of agency in a moment of helplessness and uncertainty. While still running my Washington, DC area tile and stone business, I began exploring mindfulness modalities. I spent the next nine years studying and dabbling in methods for finding resilience in life’s most challenging moments. We never know the groups to which we will belong in life. Many years later, after the birth of my very special nephew, I incorporated mindfulness into another aspect of my life. I founded a 501(c)3 to break social barriers for the disability community through mindful inclusion. In 2015, I began teaching and speaking on mindfulness in the DC area to law enforcement and private companies, and then nationally in the construction industry. I never imagined I’d have the courage to become a public speaker. I changed my mindset through intentional training.

THE PRACTICE

Mindfulness can be seen as mental fitness built through a lens of curiosity, compassion, nonjudgment, and presence. Like any type of fitness, it takes practice. Our daily thoughts are the most powerful practice of the mind, affecting our emotions, actions, and perception of life. Most thoughts happen subconsciously due to our primitive survival reflexes. These thoughts tend to scan for potential threats in order to keep us safe. This innate negativity bias inclines us to focus on what we fear, instead of what motivates and inspires us. Through intentional practice, we can learn to reset the mind from survival mode to thriving mode. The intention of Wisdom On Tap® is to empower people to quiet their survival mindset, and connect with our unique higher wisdom that propels us toward purpose, joy, creativity, and human connection. 

THE PLAN 

Our early life affects our adult perspective. My childhood was spent in 2 hemispheres, on 3 continents, and in 4 countries. I did my best to follow my heart across each one, yet my mind was often at odds with my heart. Only when we quiet the mind, can we hear what’s in the heart. My heart always sung of art. My mind had a different plan. After double-majoring in Spanish and Psychology, I graduated college with a huge void; a yearning to be creative. I took a leap of faith and set off alone on a postgraduate journey to study figurative oil painting in Italy. I accidentally met an Italian artisan, learned Italian, ruined my Spanish, and somehow got accepted to the Art Institute of Chicago. Art finally looked like my path ahead. Then I got some unexpected news…

THE PIVOT

I thwarted the Chicago dream to start a family, dragged the Italian to the USA, co-founded a tile and marble installation company, and eventually stumbled upon mindfulness meditation. While I’m not writing run-on sentences, I’m once again oil painting in my art studio. I’m also traveling the country, and sometimes overseas, speaking on how to reset the mind and fulfill the heart. I speak on mindful leadership to wonderfully inspiring and terrifyingly intimidating executive teams who somehow always turn out to be human! Mindfulness can bring a room of huge titles down to the level of common humanity. This is the level on which organizational change and creativity can happen.

CREATIVE MINDSET

I have found my way back to art, teaching creative mindset, often to those who have not yet harnessed their creative calling. Creating is a human birthright! I speak in the private sector, to first responders, to government agencies, and most often in my own head. I’ve had the privilege of sharing mindfulness in the A.R.T. Artisan Revolution in Tile training program since 2024. Creativity and science are weaved into all my workshops. My intention is to make mindfulness credible, relatable, and hopefully fun.