Special Acknowledgements

Some people show up and startle us with their vision of how things should work. They contribute without making demands and they take responsibility for various areas of the organization just because they see the value of it in the world. We want to acknowledge these individuals for their contributions over the years. They stepped up when it was really needed. It is because of people like this that we can continue to improve the services we offer.

Rachel Trueblood has been a critical organizer in the early days of the organization coming to Boulder. Not only did she organize and teach the Improvisation group, but she was critical in writing and editing some of the early manuals about the differences in Creative Expressions. Some of the ways she presents the distinctions to this day are so funny that you do not know how to respond.

Sara Wilson has not only been an advocate for Visionaries and a primary instigator for women in business, but she brought a whole level of professionalism to the organization. Our policy statements and structures are directly a result of her dedication and commitment. While she is still a master coach, she now leads a nationwide women’s empowerment organization.

Tom Faggiano is the representative for Higher Alignment in Santa Cruz. He originally became involved when we were operating in San Francisco, California. He was the original instigator and implementer of our database profiling technology. Since then, he has been operating as a coach and now has legions of young UC Santa Cruz students who are trying to learn how to choose the right partner.

Gaier Dietrich is one of our long-time students and benefactors who saw the value of the work before anyone else, and has been committed to its expression ever since. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and has applied the work in all areas of her life. 

Karen Thorson was part of the second generation of Coaches and Facilitators. The Inner Seeing program at this time was compressed into a two-week training program, and the Coaches and Facilitators had two weeks of application training, as well. What we discovered is that we develop Facilitators through trial and error and they had to be willing to explore and experiment with this work in their lives. Karen happened to be an Experimenter Extraordinaire. She was one of the first examples of using this work in every aspect of her life.

Karen Dyrenforth has invested a lot of time in the C7i children’s program and worked with Ardis as a board member of C7i. She now works with the Gay and Katie Hendricks program as a facilitator.

Ardis Hoffman was very dedicated to the C7i mission, which is to bring greater tools to parents and teachers, so they can better deal with their students’ creative differences. For three years she worked on this mission, which I believe is critical to our future. With Karen Dyrenforth and Jeannette Abshire, they worked for two years on exploring new ways to make the Higher Alignment technology more easily accepted.

Linda Stevenson was the first individual to see the potential of Higher Alignment principles in business. With Mary Stevenson and Linda Stevenson (no relation), we initially started Creative Alignment. Linda is incredibly sensitive to the politics and social dynamics of groups. She now does a program called Awakening Inquiry for individuals, organizations and communities. She is quite educated on organizational development and transformation and has been a great spokesperson for Alignment Technologies principles.

Mary Stevenson is a great Vedic astrologer, and author of Falling Over Reno. She uses the Higher Alignment principles and is great at simplifying them so that others can appreciate their insightful nature. She is also a great strategist and uses her passion to break down barriers. She now lives in the southwest.

Peter Fairfield was my acupuncturist in California and is a personal friend who became very interested in the Alignment Technology principles. He is also the Storyteller author of Deep Happy. I heartily recommend anything he is involved in.

Judy Terry is my current acupuncturist in Louisville, Colorado and is a personal friend who has also learned the Higher Alignment work. Judy has completed much of the Inner Seeing work, as well as all of the basic classes. She lives with her husband Patrick and dog, Bo.

Dale Hicks, who is also a Coach In Training, is a Shiatsu Practitioner and herbalist, who I also highly recommend.

Beryl Gulya joined Higher Alignment in 2002, when we were fairly new to the Boulder area. She was, and still is, a compatriot of Karen Thorson. They instituted puppy piles in Visionary events, and stirred up the group like few ever did. She was also critical in taking this work to Colorado Springs. She currently lives in Berkeley, California and is still coaching there.

Jeannette Abshire comes from a background of training teachers how to work with children. She dedicated several years to the C7i program with Karen Dyrenforth and Ardis Hoffman. She now primarily works with Integrated Learning Academy doing BrainGym to help retrain children’s brains for optimum performance.

Sandy Jaquith has functioned as the legal counsel for Higher Alignment Technologies for several years. Somehow, s he finds the time to do a lot of the organization, participate in the Facilitator and Coaches training programs, and co-teach whenever there is an opening. She attributes this to her Orchestrator ways, without the control that is often associated with these activities. What I would like to acknowledge is her vulnerable, yet compassionate, attitude with everyone she meets.

Stan Anderson was our original webmaster from 2000 to 2006. He was always responsive to our last-minute changes and made it seem a lot easier than it really was. He helped promote classes and was always bringing together interesting groups of people where he saw connections no one else did. He now lives in California and Alaska.

Helen Ford was our first volunteer graphic designer who initially professionalized what we did as Higher Alignment, also knows as the Institute for Spiritual Partnership at that time. She also was one of the first recruiters to adopt the Higher Alignment Compatibility Factors in her search program. I love her and she is a really good person.

Daryl Ansted is one of the most creative and inclusive architects of human thought. He loves to come up with artistic presentations that challenge us to think in new ways. He now leads the Investigator group, and finds new ways to personally make Authentic Life Expression accessible to those he meets.

Laureli Shimayo was one of our early Facilitators and Coaches. She did extensive editing and helped promote this work between 2004 through 2010. She has pioneered new ways to use this work for lesbian audiences. Her website is thrive-wise.com.

Mike Seiler was one of our early coaches. He excelled at questioning the way we were presenting a lot of the information and brought a lot of insight about differences into the program.

Kit Brown was one of the first major Compassionates in the program and helped build the community of Compassionates and expand the availability of this work in Denver. She now lives in Aspen. She was incredibly helpful in building community by hosting parties and helping to anchor the Loving Our Creative Self class.

Curt Kinkead. What do you do with an Implementer who refuses to slow down because of their Act First nature? What do you tell a guy who carries a knife around with him all of the time so he can escape any situation by going directly through a wall?  How can we be so lucky as to have a friend who is always happy to help others move, and is so good at packing that he never needs to tie anything down? Curt is the real deal when it comes to being a community organizer, as he continues to serve Marin County with his partner, Ruth Schwartz, in their food distribution program, Respecting Our Elders.

Beth Kuper is an angel. She goes around helping people, particularly children, to get the support they need. She has been an advocate of the Higher Alignment program for many years and has helped to promote many events for the last twenty years. She originally came to the program when it was in California and has been here in Boulder for more than ten years.

Rosemary O’Connor is a giver extraordinaire. After retiring, she spends more time now helping her neighbors and various organizations in a variety of ways. With Higher Alignment, she is always willing to come over and work on editing documents or helping the organization in some new way. One of her best friends is Beth Kuper and together they make quite a team.

Michael Catalano has been an MD (he is retiring in January) and heavily involved in baseball and skiing. For the last several years, he has become interested in the Alice Bailey work and has been volunteering at Boulder Sudbury School.

Rob Gersky is our original Vice President of Finance for Higher Alignment in the Bay area in California. He met his wife, Trina, who is incredibly aligned with him, through this work. They are now working on bringing up their children in the Higher Alignment way.

John Lundin-Martinez has assisted us in legal matters as a volunteer. While he emphasizes his toughness, he is actually a very caring and compassionate guy. Through the Higher Alignment work, he has learned a lot about working with children.

Dr. Lindsay Moore has been a great spokesperson for the Alice Bailey work. Her mastery of this topic is phenomenal. She has also been very kind with her consulting regarding copyright and patent issues. She is behind all of our discussions regarding how the Seven Rays relate to the Seven Creative Expressions of Higher Alignment.

Roger House has been trained as a coach in Higher Alignment, but is best known as the guy who made sure you got recording of the classes. This is because he was the first Webinar Manager, before we even knew what the title was. The amazing thing was how much time he spent recording all of the early classes. His patience is beyond the norm. 

Ruth Schwartz is an incredibly productive and enduring member of the Higher Alignment community. She was always an amazing organizer and able to multi-task in a lot of different ways. With Curt, she founded Respecting Our Elders, an all-volunteer food rescue organization. They feed thousands of people every month. She also is highly aligned with her partner, and uses the Higher Alignment tools in her business, Nifty Paws Press.

Sharon Skylor is one of our original Facilitators and Coaches and was a strong supporter of the community in California. Without her constant participation, it would have been much harder to keep the group together. I admire her diligence and perseverance in exploring relationships to their fullest.

Ed Ellsworth was our first videographer and online promoter of Higher Alignment. Ed is an incredible community organizer and is committed to many great causes, including protecting dolphins and sacred sites around the world. He excels at community building.

Brian Maher was our first Vice President of Administration in California and is quite a pugnacious advocate for doing things in the lowest cost manner. His bottom-line orientation became notorious in the group, and prompted more donations because everyone thought we were poor and struggling. We appreciated his diligence, although nowadays, Michael Catalano is taking over this job.

Ardella Nathanael is a spiritual activist. She likes to use movement to put people in new positions so they can stretch themselves into their natural being. As a teacher of Paneurhythmy, she did this most of the time. She was a consistent visitor to our programs over several years.

Joanie McGovern is the heart and soul of the group in California. She has more natural enthusiasm in her toe than most people have in their entire body. She was in one of the first groups of Facilitators and Coaches, and uses the Higher Alignment work in many ways. She has made her relationships, rather than her work, her entire life. Her commitments to her friends and partners are legendary.

Akosh is a proactive protagonist, who wants to awaken people to the real choices they have. As an Inventor, he is committed to being a rebel that takes on the establishment. As a spiritual being, he knows there are more opportunities, but gets caught up in making each battle a do or die thing. You have to love him for his perseverance and dedication to the cause. The world would be a duller place without him.

 

If you want to nominate anyone for a Special Acknowledgement, let us know. We are also looking for more pictures of our group at events, including past events. We will also be working on a Testimonials page. If you have any good things to say about us, please send them to Sandy Jaquith at sandy@higheralignment.us.