Always Sam weaves together Joan's love for children and social justice with story, art and magic. Her career and life bridge corporate and community work. For decades she thrived as a Silicon Valley leader of global marketing and training for companies like Apple, Intel and several start-ups. Her love of management and empowerment led her to work as an executive and career coach, helping people to better naviage their working lives and transitions. These endeavors led to her writing two books: Great in 8: Job Seeking Skills and Building Blocks for the New Retirement, a life stage she calls ReVitalment. In Joan's Revitalment she created and leads a classroom program, Joan of Art, designed to increase children's skills, knowledge and confidence in literacy and art.
The idea for Always Sam came out of Joan's participation in an anti-racism zoom based study group she participated in during Covid. Led by a psychiastrist friend, the readings and discussions were deep and troubling; racism is ugly and painful. Each night Joan went to bed asking herself how she could make a difference and one morning she awoke from a vivid dream knowing she had met Sam and heard his story! Four years later you see the book in front of you, now in three languages. Joan is on Sam's mission to empower children to use their kindness muscles-- the story of Sam with his color differences is a metaphor for diversity and readers see the impact of teasing and bullying and then see the beauty of kindness and inclusion. The questions at the end prompt discussions of how children can be kinder, more accepting and inclusive in their own lives.
Joan earned an M.A. in Instructional Technology from the University of Oregon and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She also studied business law and marketing at the Wharton School, creative writing, advertisiting and public relations at NYU and Psycholinguistics, Women in 19th Century British Literature and Theater at the University of London.
Joan and her husband, David, live in Santa Rosa, California, with their two sweet dogs, Zoe and Makena. Their adult son, Daniel, lives nearby in San Francisco.
