During 34 years at the Director/Management level my day-to-day operational responsibilities include strategic planning, tactical implementation, production, quality, marketing/sales, new product development, manufacturing engineering, capital planning, P&L and Cash Management. I have supervised up to 500 exempt and non-exempt employees, as well as managed multi-site/state plants ranging from 40,000 up to 1,000,000 square feet within various manufacturing disciplines including automotive, aerospace, off-highway, industrial products, food processing, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.



In 2006, I received my highest honorat the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, IL): I was recognized as 1 of 10 best African-American Engineers in The United States of America.



My management expertise also includes both union and non-union environments. My successful union contract negotiations included bargaining unit relations and agreements with the United Food Workers, United Auto Workers, Steelworkers, and Teamsters.



The focus in my career has been the creation, direction, and management of turnaround teams. These teams are successful in substantially improving the bottom-line profits of the companies I have served. As a compassionate businessman, I pride myself on treating people with respect while improving productivity and manufacturing practices. I am a servant leader. My formal education has been in Industrial Management/Supervision and Industrial Engineering (B.S. Degree - Purdue). I have also had the pleasure of learning the Japanese continuous improvement techniques used in the Toyota manufacturing system and practice Dr. Deming’s philosophy. I have been blessed to have worked in numerous countries including Japan. 

Philanthropy:

The Dave Duerson Athletic Safety Fund, Inc. (DDASF) was founded in May 2012 to commemorate the legacy of my brother, Dave Duerson (2-time Super Bowl Champion, NFL Man of the Year, during his 11- year career with the NFL).  Dave died on February 17, 2011 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.  It was confirmed on May 2, 2011 by the Neurologists at Boston University that he suffered from the 4^th and final stage of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).

Mission Statement (DDASF):

Dave Duerson Athletic Safety Fund, Inc. is a continuous program to educate all students (Grades K – 12) about concussion awareness and detection. Furthermore, we provide neurocognitive testing for all male and female student-athletes in all sports (from Cheerleading to Football) in 7th through 12th grades. This fund is designed to be a sustainable funding mechanism for the school systems that we support.

Concussion History:

My wife Lori and I originated this 501(c)3 organization.  We have a strong passion for this fund to succeed not only because of what happened to Dave, but also because I have hidden disabilities as a result of a concussion that I suffered while playing basketball at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1977 – which left me paralyzed on the left side for 6 months.  I returned to play my 2nd year at IUPUI and sustained a career-ending injury.   Ihave been diagnosed with neurological and psychological issues which have become more pronounced as the years have passed.  From the age of 30 to 61, I have been voluntarily hospitalized for these brain traumas 19 times.   This is a huge driving factor for my passion concerning the high-technology ImPACT Concussion Testing as a tool to assist the physician in the decision-making process regarding the athlete returning to play.   I have received continued treatment for these diseases since age 18.  Ihave Accumulative Concussion Syndrome, in addition to the neurological and psychological problems. Dave was my Medical Power of Attorneyfor 20 years. In addition, Dave was also on the Board of Directors for the NFL Players Association for retired player’s disability. 

As a passionate advocate for a healthy eco-living lifestyle, Charisse focuses on transforming interior spaces into beautiful, breathe-able dwellings to support the home, well-being, and the natural environment. Her mission is to empower and inspire you with the necessary tools of the trade to begin your transformational journey today.

B   O   B   B   Y

B   E   R   G   E

LEGENDARY DRUMMER 

With

ZEPHYR ...TOMMY BOLIN ...BUDDY MILES

SPECIAL GUEST ON INTERVIEWING THE LEGENDS

In the spring of 1970 Bobby Berge got a call from legendary guitarist Tommy Bolin in Boulder, and he said he wanted him to come out and audition with his band Zephyr. Bobby had been listening to their first album, and absolutely loved Tommy’s playing and the sound of the group. After flying out and hitting it off with the group with an initial audition, he immediately moved out to Boulder. He played with Zephyr for the next year or so and it was an extremely exciting experience. Boulder was a thriving musical Mecca at the time, and they would play in and around Boulder at small outdoor mini-Woodstock types of concerts.

They played in Denver at Mammoth Gardens along with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell. For a good year they flew to many major cities and played at huge concerts on the same bill as musical greats like Steve Winwood, Mountain, Fleetwood Mac, the Kinks, and Iggy Pop to name a few. In the fall of 1970, he played drums on the second Zephyr album Going Back to Colorado at Electric Lady Studios in NYC with the great Eddie Kramer as engineer. This was Bobby’s first major experience playing with Tommy Bolin and it was fantastic to say the least.

Bobby was asked if he did play on “The Grind” on the Teaser album. He did play on that track, but somehow the record company got the info wrong on the cover.

Bobby says … Tommy was always outgoing, upbeat, friendly, and extremely funny! He was so much fun for a drummer to play with. I loved to play off him and copy his lightning fast riffs as we jammed. I learned a lot about weird time signatures from him. I miss those hippie days and miss Tommy and playing with one of the greatest.

On Bobby’s work with the great Buddy Miles … Buddy’s a very talented, soulful man. During 1975-76 I did more work with him than with Tommy Bolin. I was switching back and forth with projects, mainly recording. I did the More Miles Per Gallon album with Buddy in 1975, and Bicentennial — A Gathering Of The Tribes in 1976. When we played live Buddy would play drums for a few tunes, then I’d hop on the skins and Buddy would go out front and sing. We had a five-piece horn section, a funky bass player, and keyboards. It was wild playing with both artists during that period (1975-76). I’ll put up some Buddy stuff some time, kind of a disco feel but very funky!

For more information about Bobby Berge

 visit

 https://www.tommybolin.com/ or ​http://www.zephyr-official.com/

Born and raised in small-town Mansfield, Connecticut, Alexa Curtis knew she was different. She didn’t fit into the “normal social mold.” When she entered middle school, all the bullying she endured led her to needing an outlet to escape. In 2011, at just 12 years old, she started a fashion blog, A Life in the Fashion Lane. It became a platform for her to express her feelings around everything relating to teens, body image, and mental health.

Born a man, ”LadyJames” trail blaze’s daily for the LGBT community by ”living life in my definition.” Having been bullied for his femininity, his goal is to help people going through the same who want to keep their birth gender parts. 

Award-winning mask maker Eric Bornstein of Behind The Mask Studio/Theatre specializes in custom made masks, corporate event planning, arts education, and mask theater programming. Eric has studied mask making with masters Agung Suardana in Bali, and Donato Sartori in Italy. He received his MLA in Fine Arts along with the Thomas Small prize from Harvard University. Behind The Mask was recently awarded the commission of 120 award statuettes for the prestigious Reggae Gold award event in Kingston, Jamaica. Previously, Eric was awarded a Fulbright award to revive and reinvigorate the art of giant puppet effigies in Jamaica 2017. He won the 2016 IRNE award for Best Puppetry Design for Company One’s Shockheaded Peter, and was part of the Liars & Believers team that won the Excellence in Production Design award at the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2012 for his masks in Le Cabaret Grimm. Eric was recently featured on the PBS hit show, Pinkalicious and Peteriffic. He is currently the artist-in-residence at the First Church Boston UU.

PHIL and PAM LAWSON

About Being Spherical

Being Spherical; Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century, is “an attractively bound and illustrated modern philosophical treatise,” according to the editorial reviewer, Dr. John Maling, PhD., with “practical tools” for thoughtful individuals who are “concerned with our world, and its long-term direction and our long-term survival as a civilization and race.”  

Authors Phil Lawson and Rob Lindstrom more simply defined it as “a guided tour of an emerging worldview.” 

What started out with a question: Why doesn’t the world work the way we were told it does? Turned into a realization that we, as a species are not adapting well to the realities of our times.

While Being Spherical provides the core foundation for a new way to see, think and act, in this dawning era of interconnectivity and interdependency, Phil believes people also need a way to model and apply this in real-life without having to study the sciences behind it. That’s what he’s doing now; what he and Pam are both doing now. Their boutique R&D company, Spherit, has developed a technology that demonstrates to people that it is possible, and easy, to make better decisions, in real-time, when you update your personal operating system from mechanistic to holistic.

More than 40,000 people in different ages and demographics have experienced this humane technology, in many fields and uses, including the health industry, workforce, education, employment readiness, food security, and interpersonal relations, used by U.S. military personnel.

To be spherical, you must see, think, and act spherical, say Phil and Pam.

More About Phil and Pam Lawson

When Pam and Phil met at the age of six, in the lobby of a church in Denver, both of their families were in crisis.

Pam’s mother had recently died from complications of multiple sclerosis, and Phil’s little sister had been diagnosed with leukemia and was enduring the treatments to recover.

They were in survival mode back then, experiencing constant, disruptive change. A new step-family for Pam; a cross-country move for Phil. Both of them switching houses and schools, repeatedly, in the midst of leaving friends and losing track of each other.

But Pam and Phil had a bond that was unforgettable. And Phil tracked Pam down the winter of 1968, when she was 13, when his family returned to Colorado for the holidays.

They married young at 18, anxious to make a difference in the world the only way they knew how, as volunteer mission workers, traveling the dusty back roads of East Texas armed with ginormous convictions. Followed by three years in Alabama, and seven years in Mississippi, dedicated to a cause that spanned a decade in the Deep South, paying their own way as janitors, floor cleaners and trash haulers.

They were poor. Malnourished. Embedded. But as they moved through disadvantaged communities, ravaged by inhumane conditions, they had rare and extraordinary experiences that fed them priceless information— experiences, that transcended what they had imagined was their purpose there.

And then, at the age of 29, an unexpected turn of events launched them unprepared into the business world. At the very moment the marketplace was facing unprecedented changes from new and disruptive technologies, including Microsoft’s personal computer operating system.

As Microsoft released Windows in 1985 and reached 2,793 employees by the end of 1988, Phil was working his way up from the production department of a startup multimedia firm in Dallas to the president of that company, making it a beta test center for new technology applications. And Pam rose through the ranks of the same company from quality control, to the art department, to Creative Director. By 1988, Phil had grown the operation from a handful of people to a staff of nearly 40, covering round-the-clock shifts.

Phil and Pam were busting down barriers by then, and they kept going— living and working in Hollywood; traveling to other countries on business; rubbing shoulders with creatives and intellectuals. They even experienced a couple of historic natural disasters.

But as they moved through religion, business, and the arts; through deprivation and privilege; through convention and eccentricity, they began to detect common core characteristics in all human activities, no matter the box. They began to see patterns. And they wondered if the power of personal computing might one day expedite human behavior growth.

More importantly, they began to realize they had unconventional human skills. They could adapt, flex and respond to life’s challenges, in real-time, better than anyone else they knew. But they needed scientific proof to explain what they were experiencing before anyone would take them seriously.

So, they went in search of it, at the age of 44, dropping out of the business world and moving to a cabin in the Colorado Rockies to study, think and write.

They are part of a consilience of dynamic thinkers emerging from the limits and lessons of that era, who know if they are to live well, and meaningfully, in this dawning era of interconnection, it will require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and act.

More about Phil:

• Besides being an author, inventor, patent-holder, and public speaker, Phil has worked for companies in the roles of COO, President, and EVP, (at a publicly traded internet company.)
• In addition, Phil was a management consultant for seven years and traveled internationally on business, a portion of that time living and working in Hollywood.

Also, Phil has strategically designed 5 technology systems and worked with teams of programmers to deploy them:

• The first online HMO member enrollment kiosk for HealthNet, a California HMO, working with ESRI on this project
• One of the first web-based GIS sites for consumers (@InfoNow for Visa)
• A fully integrated XML product to create Web sites & identical CD-ROMs for photographers (@StockImagery)
• Digital Asset Media Management (HTML-based) (@D-Pics)
• Spherical Modeling Tool. U.S. Patent approved 2008 (@Spherit)

In 2011 Phil began identifying ways the scripts and subroutines of the Spherit IP might help socialize AI (for use by bots or AI personal assistants) and by 2013 he was strategically designing ways it could work.

More about Pam:

When Phil and Pam lived and worked in Hollywood, Pam was a Photo-Illustrator. She did projects for the publishing, periodical and entertainment industries.

Additionally …

• Pam has been a Creative Director at two different agencies (a multi-media firm and the image bank) influencing the message and direction of those companies.
• Pam worked as a reporter for nine years giving voice to a string of mountain communities west of Denver, and received nearly two dozen journalism awards.
• As the co-owner of Spherit, Pam has been responsible for defining the voice of the company (translating abstract R&D concepts and protocols into human- speak) and for product messaging for the user interface. This has included creating online interactive pages, presentations, and co-producing countless informational videos.

SARA NIEMIETZ and W.G. SNUFFY WALDEN

Sara Niemietz is a sonic storyteller. Influenced by the heart of jazz and the soul of blues, she writes songs with a modern edge.  Composer and guitar-virtuoso, W.G. Snuffy Walden, paints musical landscapes over which Sara’s powerful vocals take flight.  At their shows, the duo plays original music and reinterpreted classics with a full band for a night full of energy and music!

Today, Sara’s credits included U.S. and international concert tours (over thirty countries with Postmodern Jukebox, and she and Snuffy have just returned from their third European Tour), starring roles on Chicago and Broadway stages, YouTube videos seen more than 26 million times, appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and the Ellen Show. She recently guest starred on The Arrangement, and her original music has been heard on Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar. Sara’s most recent album Get Right is a collaboration with Emmy-award winning composer W.G. Snuffy Walden.

W.G. Snuffy Walden has woven the musical fabric of countless beloved shows including Friday Night Lights, The Wonder Years, thirtysomething, Nashville, My So-Called Life, and the West Wing for which he won the Emmy for Outstanding Title Theme. Along the way, there have been 13 Emmy nominations, 33 BMI awards, and the Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award. Outside of scoring, Snuffy has played with such artists as Chaka Khan, Eric Burdon, and Donna Summer.

Together, Sara and Snuffy create shows filled with warmth, truth, and tunes you’ll leave humming!

https://www.saraniemietz.com/

http://www.snuffywalden.com/