Sara Troy, producer/host of 'Self Discovery Radio'

Michael Thau

Investigative Columnist

Inspired to follow in his father’s footsteps, this born and bred Long Islander is a second-generation chiropractor. A graduate of New York Chiropractic College, Dr. Todd Sinett is an applied kinesiologist, pain expert, author of several books, and the inventor of the Backbridge™ System. As the founder of Tru Whole Care, it was Dr. Sinett’s firm belief in complete, collaborative treatment that led him to establish the Whole Care model. This unique healthcare format allows medical professionals from multiple specialties to work together to provide patients with a comprehensive view, and solution, to their health issues. Over the past 20+ years, Dr. Sinett’s integrative approach has helped thousands of patients lead healthier, pain-free lives. When he’s not seeing patients, Dr. Sinett is most likely writing, cooking, or traveling.

Coach Reed is Founder of Raising Excellence, which trains coaches, educators, and sport leaders through digital learning, live training symposia, and custom-built education and certification systems. His clients range from grassroots to National Governing Bodies, and  he provides curriculum support, coach development resources, and assists with the deployment large scale education, certification, and training through videos, workshops, and mentor programs to thousands of coaches across North America.

 He is also the Co-Creator of Positive Discipline Tools for Coaches with Dr. Jane Nelsen, which are focused on empowering coaches to implement social emotional learning and behavioral collaboration methods in coaching, and he is Co-Founder of Coaches REALM, a coach-mentoring and development platform focused on helping coaches create and execute a long-term personal and professional development plan to holistically hone and refine their craft through a proprietary 1 on 1 mentoring and accountability process.

Since the release of his 2015 TEDx Talk “Echoes Beyond the Game”, he’s become a regular guest on radio shows, podcasts, and TV programs across the globe and a highly regarded public speaker known for his dynamic, insightful, and compelling presentations.

Founder Raising Excellence

Co-Creator, Positive Discipline Tools for Coaches

Coach Mentor, Join The Coaches REALM



"I Develop Leaders Who Transform Lives - By equipping those who influence our children with the tools, skills, and knowledge necessary to leave a positive legacy, I help ensure we are #RaisingExcellence in Every Child. Every Day."

Coach Reed is Founder of Raising Excellence, a coaching development company that trains coaches, educators, and sport leaders by providing the tools, skills, and knowledge necessary for unlocking individual, everyday excellence in every child.

Coach Reed is also the co-creator of Positive Discipline Tools for Coaches with Dr. Jane Nelsen, and Co-founder Coaches REALM, a coach mentoring and development platform focused on helping coaches create and execute a long-term personal and professional development plan.

With 30 years of experience as an educator/coach and Masters’ degrees in both Sport Psychology and Early Childhood Education, Reed offers a wealth of practical and science-based experience to provide real solutions to the issues we face in youth sports today.

Since the release of his TEDx talk “Echoes Beyond the Game”, he has become a trusted educator and advisor to sports organizations worldwide. Reed’s unique gifts are creating passion and purpose in others and distilling complex theories into understandable and easily implementable practices.

I develop leaders who transform lives.

Master Mingtong Gu

Founder, The Chi Center

Master Gu shares his joyous teachings and extensive master skills to train your ability to expand wisdom and energy. Born and raised in China, Master Gu received extensive Qigong training under Grandmaster Pang at the largest Qigong medicine-less hospital in China. He has mastered the unique ability to lead the collective energy field to accelerate personal and global healing. Named The Qigong Master of the Year by the World Congress for Qigong and TCM, Mingtong Gu leads retreats and workshops internationally with tens of thousands of people. Master Gu is the author of key books and the Pure Qi Online series that translate the ancient teachings of Wisdom Healing Qigong for contemporary times.

Master Gu is on faculty for Esalen Institute, Omega Institute, 1440 Multiversity, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Shift Network.  He has been a keynote presenter at Institute of Noetic Science (IONS), Wisdom 2.0, US Journal Training, PBS, and the Festival of Faiths.  He has additionally spoken at VISA, GOOGLE, Mile Hi, and the Energy Psychology Conference. 

He founded the Chi Center, a beautiful 79 acre retreat center located 20 minutes south of Santa Fe, to bring Qigong wisdom to benefit others, based on his success working with all ages and many physical and emotional challenges.

LESLIE SPENCER

After years of singing backup for the world’s most prominent big bands, vocalist and songwriter Leslie Spencer is taking her place in the spotlight with an album of her very own. Drawing on the vintage jazz roots and outsize stylings of her bandleaders Brian Setzer and Louis Prima, Jr., Leslie’s debut album, Sing Out!, is a collection of eleven fiery torch songs that transform love, loneliness and heartbreak into a captivating dramatic arc. Lusty, lyrical, bursting with unapologetic emotion and just a hint of snark, Sing Out! is the heartbreak record for romantics who refuse to play it safe.   

Recorded at The Rock House in Franklin, TN., the production of Sing Out! was overseen by Leslie’s longtime friend and collaborator, Grammy winner and legendary session musician Kevin McKendree (Delbert McClinton, George Thorogood, Brian Setzer). With music industry veteran McKendree as co-writer, engineer and mixer, the album was tracked in a breakneck two-day sprint of creative synergy. Close listeners will identify what makes this album sound so distinctly alive: the tracks were recorded live, giving the performances a raw, unpredictable edge and an authenticity that reaches through the speaker with spellbinding urgency. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the album’s title track. Co-written by Leslie and long-time friend Matt Mangano (Zac Brown Band) in a spur-of-the-moment inspiration while catching up over coffee, the song encapsulates the album’s paradoxical magic, conveying the warmth of a back room jam session and the electric intimacy of a smoky cabaret. 

Along with McKendree on piano and organ, Sing Out! includes the talents of Robert Frahm (Robert Frahm Band, Big Joe and the Dynaflows) on guitar, Patrick O’Hearn on bass (Frank Zappa, Missing Persons), Kenneth Blevins (John Hiatt, Sonny Landreth) on drums, and Eric Morones (Brian Setzer Orchestra, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy) on saxophone. With co-writing help from McKendree as well as Johnny Few and Mark Winchester, the songs on Sing Out! tell a story, not in chronological order but rather like facets in a diamond, revealing different perspectives on the journey of love going down in flames. 

With searing honesty, disarming humor, and a tonal range that goes from comforting whisper to operatic roar, Leslie’s first solo effort is the heartbreak record everyone needs. Her words are bitter and sweet in the perfect proportion of a classic Old-Fashioned, her no-holds-barred performance as cathartic as a plate hurled against the wall. For anyone who has felt robbed of their voice by love gone wrong, this is the record to make things right. As far from a plastic pop ballad as you can get, these are songs made for living, laughing, sobbing, sighing, and eventually, learning to love again.

MARSHALL LEFFERTS

Marshall Lefferts has been a student of Nature since the age of five when he made his first trip to a remote cabin in the deep wilds of the Adirondack Mountains with his parents and brothers. Fifty-five years later, he still goes to that cabin and listens intently to what Nature wishes to teach him, and much of what is shared in this book has come from those magical and insightful experiences. He also began studying music at the age of eight and is now a multi-instrumentalist, performer and composer.

In his first year of college in 1978, following a spontaneous epiphany of awakening, he began studying the martial art of Aikido and became inspired by the writings of R. Buckminster Fuller, having the good fortune of meeting Bucky the following year. Veering away from traditional academia into the indigenous education of the great Universe-ity, Marshall has traversed an unconventional path in service to the bigger picture of what’s going on here on planet Earth during this time of critical transition.

Along the way he became a Producer of media projects, starting with Star Trek CD-ROMs in the early 1990’s, then co-producing a short film about Mars Pathfinder for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1997. In 1998, he met Barbara Marx Hubbard and subsequently became Co-Director of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution from 1999-2004, launching evolve.org in 2000. During these same years he produced internet media projects for the Buckminster Fuller Institute, then located in Santa Barbara, CA, where he was living. From 2005-2009 he lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, immersing in the study of “pod consciousness” with the Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins, and composing, recording and producing a collaborative album of original music, called Mystery of Souls.

Marshall is a Board Member of the Resonance Science Foundation (serving as President from 2006 to 2019), as well as co-designer, writer and producer of the Resonance Academy, launched in 2014, for which he continues to serve as an Adjunct Faculty. From 2007 to 2012, Marshall served as Associate Producer for the documentary film, Thrive: What On Earth Will It Take?, which is now the most widely viewed independent documentary film, and is collaborating again with the Thrive team as Co-Director of Visual Effects and Post-Production Supervisor for Thrive II: This Is What It Takes! (coming in 2020).

A proud native Washingtonian, Anise Jenkins is a two-time graduate of Howard University (BA in political science and Masters in Business Administration) and currently resides in the Shaw neighborhood in the District of Columbia.



Jenkins is the executive director of Stand Up! for Democracy in DC (Free DC).  Since its inception, Stand Up! / Free DC was the only grassroots organization in the District of Columbia focused primarily on the pursuit of statehood.  Recognizing that only through being admitted to the Union as a state, will DC residents be able to rise above the ongoing oppression by members of Congress.  This year, Stand Up!  is celebrating two decades of agitating, educating, organizing and mobilizing for DC statehood. 



Anise is passionately committed to all forms of equal civil and human rights causes.  She was named one of the 50 most influential people in Washington, DC in 2013 by The Washington Informer, received a Trailblazer Award in 2005 from the National Congress of Black Women, is a 2002 recipient of a Human Rights Community Award from the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area and is a member of DC Area Phi Beta Kappa Association.



Follow Anise Jenkins on Twitter at @MsFreeDC and Stand Up! at @StandUp_Free DC.