The VisualsSpeak Development Team

Front: Tom Tiernan Back from left: Claire Richtman, Wayne Baseden, Anne Reeve, Susanne Taylor, Antimo Cimino, Kathryn Reder

There have been hundreds of people who have influenced VisualsSpeak, and over time I will write about a number of them. But in the beginning, this is the core crew that sat through endless hours of testing, answered hundreds of questions, read and edited many papers that really needed clarification, and were my own personal cheering squad. I could never have done the initial testing without them. These are the earliest of the early adopters.

Tom is my business partner, who made the production possible through his investment, letting us take over his condo for office and training space, hosted great barbecues and did the bulk of the photography in the ImageSets.

Claire Richtman is a career and leadership development coach. She helped us understand how important the tool is for helping people find their true calling and what they really want to do. She taught us about the importance of talent management and how succession planning was going to be an increasing part of what we were going to be called on to assist with in the coming years. Claire is with Lee-Hecht Harrison.

Wayne Baseden is a fitness coach and diversity trainer and the sales king. He helped us see the power the tool has to offer an opportunity to the many people who have never had a voice to come to the table and be heard. He reminds us to keep the balance, and to get back to the gym and work out. He radiates his positive energy and never tires of telling us he believes in what we are doing.

Anne Reeve is a leadership coach, currently working at Microsoft. Her coaching business is Red Rock Coaching and Consulting. Anne was working with collage when a friend suggested she look at what I was doing. She was in graduate school at Fielding Graduate Institute studying Organizational Development. We began looking at visual methods from the differing perspectives. She got a number of her colleagues who work in strategic communications to go through the process, and they provided one of the sets of data I looked at for my culminating project for my Masters degree. She brought the executive level perspective and explained the necessity of getting outcomes attached to business drivers.

Susanne Taylor is a cross-cultural consultant working with business people and their families who are moving from one country to another. She is passionately committed to VisualsSpeak and we have counted on her to show up and contribute whether it is organizing, surveying, generating ideas for images or programs, or talking to people at conferences. She’ll be moving to Germany in June, so we hope she’ll continue to spread the word in Europe.

Antimo Cimino brings the passionate exuberance of his Italian culture to everything he touches. Over and over again, he has brought our thinking and understanding of our entrenched US way of thinking to light. No one describes a VisualsSpeak image quite like he does; we had to extend our idea of how metaphoric one can be. Antimo also did some of the photography in the ImageSet. Who he is as an interculturalist and artist continues to enrich our understanding of what we are doing, and helps us to see in many new ways. He is now working with Mercer Delta. His photography website is here.

Kathryn Reder is an artist and a licensed professional counselor. She helped us understand the need for creating categories to help people manage the visual load, and sat for many hours cutting out magazine photos for us. She has also helped us understand how important it is to be clear with the boundaries we work within. Visual images are very powerful and we need to be ready to refer participants to other professionals if issues surface out of our range of expertise. Kathryn works for Clackamas County.