I founded Academic Innovations in 1990 to help high school and college educators prepare students for self-sufficient futures. Each year, more than 200,000 students complete comprehensive guidance courses based on the Career Choices series and the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® Follow Up Modules I have authored and co-authored. HOW IT STARTEDWhile struggling to support myself through college in the early 1970s, I envisioned someday creating a curriculum that high schools could use to motivate young people to stay in school and prepare themselves for a career and a satisfying life. In 1990, when I finally had the financial reserves to capitalize on my dream, I started Academic Innovations from my home office, fulfilling the initial stream of orders from my garage. Today, Academic Innovations works with hundreds of high schools across the country to help prepare students for self-sufficient futures.Working with Dr. Rebecca Dedmond of The George Washington University in 2005, I helped develop the Freshman Transition Initiative. In 2009 I partnered with the leadership of Santa Barbara City College's Dual Enrollment Department to evolve the Freshman Transition Initiative model and develop the curriculum strategies for the college's Dual Enrollment Freshman Transition course. This work expanded in 2012 to the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® Initiative and, in 2014, to the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® National Resource Center. HOW IT'S GOINGToday, with more than 2.5 million books in print, my team and I continue to champion the high tech/high touch approach to learning with the conviction that student/teacher relationships are the key to student success.

Founding member of the Advisory Committee for the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® National Resource Center, a non-profit supporting a high school/college collaboration model that touches the lives for more than 200,000 students each year.

Developed and taught a graduate-level certification program for Get Focused Stay Focused Program and Curriculum Specialist. The 15-unit program was designed to prepare educators to lead a Get Focused Stay Focused program that promotes high school graduation, post-secondary completion, and successful, skilled entry into the workforce.

Executive director for a large non-profit organization advocating for and provide services to girls and young women. Founder of Advocacy Press, publisher of the best-selling "Choices: A Teen Woman's Journal for Self-Awareness and Personal Planning" and "Changes," a young men's version. These two books helped "kick-start" the gender equity movement in the early 1980s. Advocacy Press also published a number of children's picture books, including the Ingram number one best-seller (August 1987) "Minou" and "My Way Sally," the 1989 Ben Franklin Award winner for Best Children's Picture Book.

Developed and taught a business ed course designed to help students learn how to effectively manage non-profit organizations.