On Monday, January 23, 2012, the movers and shakers in metro Atlanta business came out to the exquisite Cole Haan boutique in Phipps Plaza to celebrate the birthday of Atlanta’s very own supermodel and businesswoman, Ms. Renée Knorr.

The wonderful evening was called the “Celebration of Life Birthday Fetes”, and the special and invited guests who attended were proudly wearing Renée’s favorite colors, black & Chanel shade pink.

When we arrived at Phipps Plaza, it seemed as though the entire mall had closed down for this very special occasion celebrating the life of one of Atlanta’s most beloved citizens. As we entered the fabulous Cole Haan boutique with the talented and creative Glennette “Cookie” Haynes, owner of Stephin Oubre Events and Interiors, we were warmly greeted by those who were already there, mingling and networking.

One of the first people we met was Renée’s personal photographer, who’s also a celebrity in his field, Mr. Paul Biagui. Susan Zeltman, Store Manager at Cole Haan and her staff made everyone at the event feel truly welcomed. The co-hosts for the evening were Roberta White and Janee Knorr. They both did their best to ensure everyone had a great time. The music for the evening was provided by Unknown Lyric and the gift bags everyone received were compliments of the following sponsors: Smallcakes, Infiniti of South Atlanta, BVLGARI, FRS Energy Drink and Anuschka Jivan Wellness Spa.

It was also great seeing Jing Chen from the Falun Dafa Association of Atlanta. Jing was there telling everyone about Shen Yun Performing Arts appearing in Atlanta for the first time this year at the Cobb Energy Center. She reminded us that January 23rd is the start of the Chinese New Year!

It was a pleasure meeting Shawn Brown, owner of Cheese Caked; Jamar Bates, Financial Services Professional with Mass Mutual Financial Group; Mayson Hulsey, Event Coordinator for SmallCakes – A Cupcakery; Terry Check of Terry Check Photography;  Barry C. Omekam, Director of Bkamgroup Inc.; and Carlos Coleman, CEO of CFOX Productions. Carlos… thanks for telling us about your 1st Annual Black History Parade on February 25, 2012 on Peachtree Street and Auburn Avenue in downtown Atlanta. It was also great to meet Johan Kjellsten, a fellow tennis enthusiast.

A few minutes before Renée Knorr made her grand entrance into the private event, we were kindly instructed by the hostess, Roberta White, to form a long line on each side of the store. We were to resemble a runway so that Renée could feel even more at home. She gracefully strutted and glided down the human runway, briefly stopping to warmly hug and give a friendly kiss to all who were lined up on each side of her to whisper birthday wishes.

Renée looked very lovely, elegant and statuesque in her Ben’s Design dress, which was a heavenly pink color, shantung satin, with chantilly lace at the top, adorned with 24k gold trim and fine gold links.

After the event at Cole Haan, we were off to Buckhead to have dinner at a reserved room for Renée Knorr’s birthday guests at the popular Sufi’s Persian Restaurant. Mosha, the owner of this lovely restaurant and his wonderful staff did a marvelous job making sure that everyone was served in a timely and efficient manner.

Lauren Lovanella with Georgia Crown Distributors, provided the pink champagne, and Renée Knorr gave a special salute to the other January birthday babies who were present: Calvin Anderson, Dawn, Joi Williams, Gene Gimono and the publisher of The 19th Hole Magazine, Ian Lawrence. Music at the dinner was provided by performing artists, Antonia Lawrence and Yewanda. Antonia sang her new and uplifting song, “The Power of a Woman”, as a tribute to Renée and she also led the group in a Stevie Wonder rendition of “Happy Birthday”.

Renée Knorr gave a heartfelt thanks to her dynamic styling team: Hair Stylist, Sean Anderson; Pink Passion Dress Designer, Ben Almonor; Fashion Stylist, Tobias Terrell; Bebe’s Earring Fashion; and Make-up “The Beautiful One” Inspired by Roberta White.

Renée Knorr is currently featured in the 2012 Leading Ladies in Atlanta Business edition of People You Need to Know Magazine available at metro Atlanta Kroger and Whole Food stores. We were honored to be among her many esteemed guests. The evening will definitely be one to remember.

People You Need to Know Magazine
Atlanta’s #1 Magazine Showcasing Women Business Owners
Member: Atlanta Press Club
Winner: Best Promoter “Spark Plug” ~ New America Media

Photography Credit: Paul Biagui

Maintaining a work-life balance is essential if we are to be effective and fulfilled in life. It is easy to lose focus when we are out of balance. Work-life balance is now considered to be the second most important driver in employee attraction and commitment ahead of compensation. Importantly, those workers who have it work twenty-one percent harder.

The preoccupation with work-life balance is no surprise in today’s busy existence. Gone are the days when leaving the office meant actually leaving work behind. Blackberries, laptops, iPhones and the magnitude of social media sites mean our availability and our access is constant. This easily gets out of control, particularly if you are a type A personality (workaholic). The competitive global environment and current economic uncertainty puts increasing pressure on people to work overtime due to cuts in manpower and the constant threat of redundancy.

The consequences of all this, not surprisingly, is more stress, ill-health and inbalance. We have better living standards and more wealth than ever before yet people feel less happy with their lives. Women especially have greater opportunity, achievement, more influence and financial independence yet face increasing levels of depression.

Every human being deserves the right to live in balance, giving time and energy to the things that enrich and fulfill us and make our lives worth living. Positive psychologist, Martin Seligman writes that some people are hard-wired to respond optimistically to work-life balance or the ups and downs in life, while others are not. The good news is it can be learned with a little bit of discipline.

6 Tips for Leading a Balanced Life

1) What do you really want?
We leak energy and become drained and frustrated when we get into a pattern of pleasing others and living in accordance with their standards rather than our own.
Are you clear of your motives and your underlying passions and purpose in life?
What are your values and are they in sync with your actions?
Are you being truly authentic and speaking your truth?
Getting clarity on what you truly want from your life is the first critical step to leading a more balanced and meaningful existence.

2) Who are you surrounding yourself with?
Are you stimulated by your peers, colleagues and clients?
Do you have true friends who have your best interests at heart?
Are you in the right environment to best utilize your talents and gifts?
Do you have a personal development plan or life/business coach to provide objective guidance?

3) Are you thinking the right way?
There is substantial evidence that the way we think can have a profound and a lasting effect on our mood and motivation levels. If you are one of life’s pessimists, then you will need to re-program your thoughts to expect the best, not the worst, and to swap those habits for more encouraging self-talk. Focus on what has been going well rather than how far you are from your goals. See obstacles as opportunities, remain flexible and open to possibilities. Recognizing and being grateful for what you have is a great way of getting things in perspective.

4) Listen to your body.
Self-care is essential to restore and maintain well-being and balance.
Are you sleeping well?
What are your eating habits?
How would you describe your energy levels?
Taking time to exercise and look after yourself is an essential component to balanced living. Listen to your intuition as it never lets us down and provides the subtle nudges to move us in the direction that is right for us.

5) Set healthy boundaries.
Real life and business is interconnected, but that does not mean you need to give up your privacy. You need boundaries so you can feel generous without feeling depleted and available without feeling drained.

6) Nourish your Soul.
Review your emotional and spiritual health. Do you need to forgive someone or let something go?
Are you learning something new?
Are you fully engaged in your work?
Are you connected?
Is there something you were born to do?

While company policies geared at greater flexibility of hours are in demand, they only go so far in providing the solution to employee engagement and commitment. There is an increasing trend of employees turning away from the daily treadmill and looking for alternative solutions to create a more balanced way of life. You deserve to have a more balanced way of life.

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Kath Roberts now describes herself as a ‘talenteur’ and ‘corporate escapee’ having spent 13 years in the recruitment industry for an international brand where her last role was Managing Director. She now liberates talent by coaching others in following her lead to set-up their home business selling personal development products creating financial freedom and enhanced work life balance. If you’re looking to escape the corporate world and become a home entrepreneur, but you’re not sure how, then this is an option you might want to consider. For more information please visit http://www.alchemy4thesoul.com

Adult women today are under more stress than women in any previous generation. While the sources of stress are both internal and external, there’s no doubt that stress has a deleterious effect on women’s health, and that it can certainly accelerate the aging process.

One of the stressors that women face is the enormous pressure to juggle family and work. With over 70 percent of elementary school children having a working mom, mothers strive to shine in their careers while giving their children the care and attention they need to thrive. Throw in assorted soccer practices, dance lessons, swim team trials, and other after school activities – plus the occasional business trip – and women often find themselves racing from one event to another. Housekeeping chores, even when shared, add another layer of “to-dos” to a woman’s life. The end result is that the things that a woman does for her own physical, spiritual, and mental health fall to the bottom of the list, and are all too often neglected.

Another major stressor in women’s lives – and one that is surely detrimental to women’s health – is the emphasis that advertisers and the media place on a woman’s appearance. Although there have been some acknowledgments that this is a factor, and some companies have changed their ad campaigns to incorporate images of “real women,” women today still hold unrealistic expectations of their own health and beauty. Given that the average American woman is five feet, five inches tall and 160 pounds, the pressure to become model-thin is often irresistible. As a result, women spend inordinate amounts of time, energy, and money on weight loss plans and exercise regimes that do little to permanently alter their physiques and instead stress them out even more.

At its most basic, the key to women’s health and healthy aging is stress relief. Relieving stress is an active choice that women must make, and one that will ultimately make them better partners, mothers, and workers. Here are three preliminary steps that will move any woman towards having more energy and mental clarity, as well as a greater sense of satisfaction:

1. Prioritize - You can’t do it all, but you can do most of it. Make a list of the values and goals that are most important to you, and then take a hard look at the ways you spend your time. Are your activities supporting your values and goals? If not, drop those that don’t support you and focus your energy on those that do.

2. Engage in Self-Care – Unless your proverbial cup is full, you won’t have anything to give anyone else. That means taking care of your body, mind, and soul. Set aside time each week to nourish your spirit, and nourish your body with the health food and health supplements that will give you the energy to go about your day.

3. Learn to Say “No” - Most women are people pleasers, and are too quick to agree to anything that is asked of them. Learn to set good boundaries with others and you will feel less stressed and better able to focus on the activities that are important to you and your family’s well-being.

Remember that relieving stress is a choice – one that will lead to women’s health and healthy aging.

Many people do not think that they are creative. This is because the creative spark has been smothered underneath the day-to-day stress of earning a living and not taking any time to explore and develop our passions. You can easily learn creativity to better express yourself. There is creativity in some form within everyone, whether it is a deeply buried urge to use colors or an embedded set of emotions that are stirred by musical notes. Creativity doesn’t just mean painting or creating some kind of art, creativity is letting your mind and your soul be free to wander, to express how you feel in any kind of medium.

There are numerous benefits to getting in touch with your creativity. First and foremost, learning to be creative and freeing your mind to do so enables you to better explore your feelings and express those feelings more clearly … verbally. Creative activity also relieves stress and can help clear your mind of daily stressors making you more relaxed, giving you the ability to sleep or concentrate better afterwards. Learning creativity means getting in touch with the “you” that may be hidden from the rest of the world.

You may not have any training with artistic expression such as painting, but when you hold a brush to a clean piece of paper you may find that your mind knows what it wants to express and the colors you choose, the strokes you make are all straight from your heart. Don’t ever think that finding your creativity means that you have to take classes or training; unless that is what you want to do. You can always allow yourself a private relaxation and stress relieving creative activity that isn’t for anyone else to see or even know about. Your urge to create comes from deep within, and if you don’t let it out to play once in a while, it can affect all sorts of areas in your everyday life. That creative juice is there, but it’s up to you to open the cap and let it out.

Learn creativity to better express yourself verbally, emotionally, physically and visually. Each step you take toward developing your creativity and finding your passions will reflect in your day-to-day life. You will find that you are more relaxed, more open to new ideas and much more creative when it comes to problem-solving and dealing with stressors. Your body will feel healthier, your mind will be clearer and your soul will be free.
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Sheryl Hill is an outspoken and eloquent advocate. Her Cause is Clear – keep America’s children and students safe on programs abroad – a $17 billion (and growing) federally unregulated industry. Sheryl, and her husband Allen, are founders of ClearCause Foundation.

In June of 2007, the Hills thought they were giving their sixteen year old son, Tyler, the opportunity of a lifetime. That dream turned into every parent’s nightmare. Vibrant, athletic, intelligent, tender-hearted, 6’ 2” and 215 pound Tyler died full of his future half a world away on a People to People Student Ambassador’s trip to Japan in 2007. His death was 100% preventable.

The Hills did not expect to hear from hundreds of families calling for help when they launched www.tylerhill.org to inform and engage the public about Tyler’s death and the lack of federal guidelines, oversight, minimum qualifications, standards, sanctions or transparent public reporting on the safety record of organizations taking our children and students on programs abroad.

Sheryl has hosted eight international students over a period of twelve years, four girls and four boys, from Finland, Sweden, France, South Africa, Germany, Japan, Chile and Brazil. She knows firsthand how challenging and rewarding cultural exchange and global travel can be and how badly the industry needs to be held at the highest standards with transparency and mandated standards. Our kids, our future, deserve to be protected from the abuse, rape, death, and more that occur on programs abroad.

ClearCause Foundation is developing traveling youth and student standards of safety, or TYS SOS. TYS SOS will become a safety certification program, and mobile app, providing America’s children and students with skills and tools to help them select safe programs, prepare for a safe and rewarding experiences abroad, and take appropriate actions to advocate for themselves when threatened overseas. TYS SOS will provide a rating on student preparedness. Click on the “Stay Safe” tab of their website. ClearCause is calling for advocates to join in and sign a petition asking for protections when our kids and students go abroad on programs. There is an awareness social media campaign on facebook.com/clearcause and twitter.com/clearcause. Please spread the word about ClearCause Foundation’s Simple Truth, in honor of all young Americans who died full of their future abroad. Your financial support is tax deductible and greatly appreciated.

Sheryl, or ‘Sher’ to friends, was born in San Antonio, Texas to a mother of Choctaw heritage. Sher’s mom is the only child out of twelve who earned a high school education. Sher is the only child out of four with a college degree. Her family grew up poor. Her mom, Beatrice, was a single mother with four kids who got by in Texas as a field hand, cotton picker and waitress when they were small. Beatrice met her soul mate – Art, when Sher was five. Art rescued them from dirt floors, wrapped them in love and stability, and moved them far, far away.

Sheryl’s ‘real’ dad, Art, was a welder and a truck driver who followed pipeline work. First they moved to Colorado, then to Alaska’s off shore oil rigs, then to the Colorado Rockies and back to Alaska’s Alyeska pipeline. Sheryl’s mom and dad are buried together under the midnight sky in Kasilof, Alaska.

Sheryl met her soul mate, Allen, in Anchorage in 1983. They relocated to Minnesota, married and started their family. First Tyler in 1991, then his little brother Alec in 1995. Tyler died at 16, Alec is in his sixteenth year.

Sheryl holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Saint Mary’s University in Minneapolis. She has worked as an award-winning major markets information technology account manager within the healthcare industry for Fortune 500 companies like Honeywell Information Systems and US West. Her boys told her they needed her at home a few years before Tyler passed. She honored their request, fulfilling her role as an accomplished grant writer, nonprofit consultant and philanthropic advocate for homeless children, food shelves, diabetes and education.

Sheryl is a world-class speaker and award-winning author of Walking on Sunshine, NRG – A Divine Transformation, a spiritual memoir. Her book is not your everyday book about grief. It inspires and helps the reader unfurl from a fog of grief so thick that light cannot penetrate with evidence of life after death. Her book is a USA Book News award-winning finalist helping bereaved people move beyond compassion to hope and promise.

You can find Sheryl supporting women entrepreneurs at Women, Wisdom & Wine, Horizon 100, American Pen Women, World Speakers and more when she is not cheering for her hockey goalie son, exercising, writing or advocating for safety for America’s children.

www.clearcausefoundation.org
www.tylerhill.org
www.walkingonsunshine.org

If you have a small business, it is especially important to find marketing and advertising techniques that can help to promote and build it. However, some forms of marketing are either too expensive or just not that practical for small businesses to use. Fortunately, this is not the case with mobile marketing. In fact, when used properly, mobile marketing can be an extremely cost-efficient and effective way to connect with your prime target audience.

Many people prefer doing business with small companies because of the personalized touch they can provide. If this is the case with your customers, then mobile marketing can be an especially good fit. Mobile marketing can be used as a great advantage to provide specialized information to a targeted audience. A well-researched contact list can be the secret to making this technique work for your company. The more you know about your customers and potential customers, the more relevant the information you can provide them will be. For example, if you have a list of people who have answered a survey stating their interest in a particular product, you can target them through mobile marketing with the exact information that they would need.

Mobile marketing is also a great way to increase the visibility of your small business. After all, the more forms of advertising you use, the better your chances are for name recognition and credibility. Customers will naturally assume that you are a technically savvy company when you utilize mobile marketing. In most cases, this is exactly how you want your customers – and potential customers – to view your company.

This form of marketing also makes it easy to start out small, expanding if and when you feel the need. You might choose to start small with just a simple text messaging program. If successful, you could then expand to other forms of mobile marketing – perhaps even investing in the development of a specialized mobile application.

To find out more about getting a specialized mobile application for your company, contact Marie-Antoinette, “Queen of Texting.” http://www.TalkTextMobileSolutions.com 678-428-0046

It was Barbara Garwood’s first trade show. She had seen intricately designed jewelry in Hong Kong, pursued the craftsmen to a small village near Chinese Mongolia, gave design instructions through an interpreter, and was displaying her imported wares at one of the biggest wholesale shows – The Atlanta Gift Mart.

“A jeweler kept bringing people over to our booth saying our pieces were amazing,” she says. “He would tell people this is the same as the Faberge eggs, this is an ancient art, and this is not done anymore. The whole time I’m taking notes, and telling my business partner, ‘Hey, I think we’ve got something here.’”

“I liked it. I designed it. I picked the colors, but actually I knew nothing, “ says Garwood, who invested $5,000 on her initial inventory. “After all, my background was in designing home furnishing textiles, what did I know about jewelry?”  While Barbara lost money on that first show, she found she had something much more valuable: Good Instincts. From that learning experience in 1993, Garwood realized her Mongolian-style filigree and enameled handmade bracelets, necklaces, pendants, and pins are far too unique to sell to mass-market, mall type jewelers.

That is why the Atlanta-based designer is bringing her collection where you can see and buy her works of art. Currently you can see Barbara’s designs in National Geographic and Smithsonian gift catalogs, as well as in the Uno Alla Volta designer catalog, and Ross-Simons and Stauer catalogs. Also, in addition to museums, Garwood’s designs can be found in high-end boutiques, gifts shops, and art galleries throughout the USA and internationally. Barbara also has been commissioned to design the Queens’s Brooch for the Genghis Khan traveling exhibit.

Barbara has been refining the designs over the last 18 years to fit Western tastes and fashion. It took some fast talking—through an interpreter—to break thousands of years of tradition, on how the pieces should look. Asian custom dictates that the jewelry fit the countenance of a Chinese Qing Dynasty queen in the 1600-1700’s.  Think big and ornate. Her sterling silver pieces, including many that are 24kt. gold plated, feature Russian and Chinese influences handed down by master craftsmen over the last 1000 years. Barbara’s challenge was to make the pieces smaller, more feminine and practical to wear while using a computer at the office.

Other changes involve the stones and the color of the glass enamel. “Asians have yellow skin and they wear more olives, oranges, red and brown; things that compliment their skin. Much of the Western population is pink-toned and wear more blues, purples, teals and pinks and those type colors. The gold looks great on darker skins and so I’ve been able to design something for everyone to look great in!” You don’t realize it until you start working and designing with it and you see the difference.

However in rural Asia, old habits die hard. “In Oriental craft, you can only make changes when you are a master,” says Garwood. “Here I was some American designer trying to mess things up. You can only become a master when you have copied your mentor a zillion times and you have the age of an old Buddhist monk!  That is just the way they look at it.”

On the other hand, when Barbara’s orders flooded in, the keepers of the faith began to see things a little differently. Garwood says, “They began to ask me what NEW designs did I want to do next!” While Barbara is now able to flex her creative muscle without too much resistance, she emphasizes, “I do not change the craft; I only change the shapes and colors and add things like safety clasps. In fact, one of my major goals is to preserve this dying art and provide steady employment for the 20 women who put the pieces together.”

Initially an artisan uses tweezers to hand-fashion the filigree: sterling silver wire turned into intricate patterns, as well as butterflies and flowers. Also, they design very small shapes that will later gleam with multi-colored enamel glass. All the filigree wires are fused together with silver dust in a kiln, fired to approximately 1700 degrees Fahrenheit.

After the filigree work, the enamel artists take over.  The designed forms are filled with blends of very fine ground enamel powder according to Barbara’s drawings. The entire piece is then fired once again in 1500 degree heat. This turns the enamel into beautiful glass tints with a permanent high gloss finish. Because the filigree and enameling skills are so different and precise, each piece of jewelry typically requires two different craft persons to make it.

During the process, the enamel artist must use extreme care not to melt down the silver body of the jewelry with all its painstaking detail. “It’s very intuitive,“ says Garwood. “It’s an art. They just know how much time to leave the pieces in the kiln and how to control the temperature. It is all part of this incredible handmade process, handed down from generation to generation.”

Today Barbara continues to fly by the seat of her well-worn travel trousers, buying different eye-catching stones that adorn her designs. “When starting out, we didn’t know what type of stones they really were” says Garwood,  “so we actually took a few pieces to the Nature Store at the mall to figure out what all the stones were. I use many unusual stones such as iolite, chrysocolla, serpentine, and exotic jaspers from far away places, as well as semiprecious stones such as garnets, peridot, amethyst, topaz, lapis and turquoise. We bought a book to help us, too. It was a learn as you go experience.”  The last step is to set stones, and to either 24kt gold plate or antique finish the pieces.

The entire process takes 4-7 days to make one piece of   jewelry. Widely recognized arbiters of good taste—and good art—have kissed Garwood’s designs with their seal of approval. With such a ritzy pedigree, you would expect to pay a small fortune for these museum pieces, especially those with the deep, rich color of 24kt gold. But that’s where more beauty lies.

“You get the look of high karat gold without paying the price, especially NOW with precious metals at an all time high,” Garwood explains. “People say ‘Wow, your prices are great for all that work!’ You can‘t tell it is 24kt gold over sterling silver.”

Garwood says, “The craft is marvelous. Because you don’t see this type of jewelry, people often stop me and ask if what I’m wearing is antique, and where did I get it.  I have one longtime customer who paid me the highest compliment. She said, ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that if I don’t want to be bothered on a particular day I don’t wear your jewelry because people stop me all day long!’”

Experience the Art….Compliments Included™

If anyone is interested in this line of jewelry, there are two web sites:
For consumers: http://www.HandmadeArtJewelry.com
For wholesale: http://www.BarbaraGarwood.com

Event Sold Out

Renée Sattiewhite, one of the principals of Sattiewhite Training Productions, Inc., is a proven leader in the strategic planning, design and implementation of training initiatives in the areas of board development, team building, effective communication and customer service. She also serves as an executive coach and mentoring trainer and is the go-to person in assisting organizations with high-impact marketing campaigns.

She is credited with giving organizations a “New Look” in the areas of customer satisfaction, employee relations, marketing materials and training manuals. She travels extensively, in order to train and give presentations to over 10,000 employees, managers and executives annually, in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.

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Carolyn Taylor, RN, volunteers with the homeless and is committed to keeping her employees working during this though economic downturn. However, her most noble accomplishment is the work she does — day in and day out as the leader of her company, Choice Nursing Services.

As adults, more than anything else, we value our independence. With society growing older, a few of the major concerns of the aging is their self-esteem, taking care of themselves and remaining in their homes.

Carolyn Taylor specializes in assisting the elderly, giving them an opportunity to remain in the comfort of their homes, especially those with failing health … the ones who need it most. She works tirelessly to give the people she serves the respect and honor they deserve.

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Sebrena Sumrah-Kelly is a native of Guyana, South America, and is known as “Atlanta’s #1 Networker”. Many people also know her for her strong dedication and passion for connecting business owners and people from different cultures. She encourages business owners to move beyond their communities through effective networking with the goal of forming personal and professional relationships in order to do MORE business.

Having been in the networking/marketing industry since 2007, she is quickly making a great name for herself in metro Atlanta, and is looking to take her organization, Caribbean & American Business Connections, global.

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Renée Knorr is the Fashion & Beauty Director of The 19th Hole Magazine. She’s a haute couture fashion model, an executive producer, fashion director, mother, mentor, golfer, humanitarian and soon to be Best-Selling author.

She has made a commitment and is dedicated to empowering more females to learn to play golf and pursue a college education with the assistance of golf scholarships. In three years, she has mentored more than 100 students through Future Seekers. We’re proud to honor Ms. Renée Knorr for the tremendous work she does to help young girls live more positive, productive lives, and strive for a BIGGER and brighter future.

Marie-Antoinette “Queen of Texting,” is a mother, U.S. Air Force veteran, Toastmaster, and excellent down-home southern cook. She attended college at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and recently completed a graduate certificate in Social Media Integration from Drury University. Future plans include building strong alliances with major corporations and advertising agencies while expanding her mobile marketing company, TALKTEXT Mobile Messaging Solutions. She is also the Marketing Director at GoTextTalk.com.

If all that isn’t enough, Marie-Antoinette founded Texting Organization Against Distracted Driving (TOADD). Her organization seeks to heighten awareness and provide education about the dangers of driving distracted, cell phone risks, and social site dangers. Since driving while texting has become the number one killer of teen drivers, her MISSION is to save lives.

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Misty Oaks is a superstar Attorney and a true renaissance woman who is forming her conglomerate piece by piece and brick by brick. She is a writer, a speaker, and a radio personality. For her … writing is truly her escape from the stresses of the legal profession. It is her catharsis, her therapy — her window to the world. She has written articles for award-winning websites such as CarolRoth.com and AOL’s online local news source, patch.com.

As a speaker, she has used her platform as a young African-American female entrepreneur to lead, coach, and inspire thousands of women at area conferences, workshops, and seminars.

As a young Atlanta attorney, Misty Oaks is really making her mark and setting a new standard of excellence, proudly blazing a trail for others to follow.

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Dr. Taunya Lowe, President of The Resurgent Group of Metro Atlanta, LLC, holds a doctorate in General Human Services and a certificate in Diversity Studies from Capella University; a Masters degree in Counseling and Psychological Services, and a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Community Health Education, both from Clark Atlanta University.  Her background spans many disciplines which include: nonprofit organizations, academia, counseling services, consulting, strategic planning, leadership coaching for non-profits, training, private sector, and government.

Dr. Lowe has worked in various aspects of the field of addiction since 1997 and is most proud of her role as the Statewide Women’s Treatment Coordinator for the Department of Mental Health Developmental Disabilities and Addictive Diseases from 1999 to 2004, where she developed the infrastructure for women’s treatment, introduced the Trauma Recovery and Empowerment trauma model, and earned a statewide Community Service Award for improving the quality of life for women’s gender specific substance abuse residential services.

For two years in a row, Dr. Lorie Johnson, President of Just For You Women’s Healthcare, has been listed by the Consumers’ Research Council as one of the “Top OB/GYNs in America.”

She has earned degrees at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and MCP/Hahnemann University in Philadelphia. Becoming a doctor had been a lifelong dream since she was 4-years-old.

Before coming to Georgia, Dr. Johnson was employed as a physician in a group practice. Starting her own practice took a huge leap of faith and a lot of hard work, but she has continued to move forward making a positive difference in the health of women all over metro Atlanta. Her charitable spirit has moved her to travel to Africa on more than one occasion to provide medical services through the Worldwide Mission Church. Next year, her office will host “The World’s Biggest Baby Shower” as a way to help families in need.

Know thyself. Feedback, input, guidance, mentoring … all vitally important to brilliant women BUT, no one knows you like you. Finding your authentic voice and listening to your intuition should always be the barometer for your next steps. Trust it, it will never steer you wrong. When you live authentically, honoring who you are, courage and confidence are natural ingredients and increase exponentially.

You are enough. You’re smart, talented to the stars and back, but you find yourself second-guessing your capabilities and allowing that mean lil’ devil girl on your shoulder to poke you with her pitchfork of fear, insecurity, doubt, and limiting beliefs. You wait, feeling that you are not quite ready, when in fact, you are more ready than you know. Courageous confident women know that they will feel fear and uncertainty, but push forward in spite of it, knowing that mistakes are opportunities to learn and grow. You have infinite and priceless worth in your authentic self.

Clarity Is Queen. You know exactly what you want (and what you don’t want); you are aware of when your values and priorities change and adjust accordingly. Being afraid to say what you want and declare it does not serve you. Courageous confident women have their own personal blueprint for success. Clarity is personal power squared.

Balance Does Not Exist. In honoring all the wonderful pieces of you, you know that the traditional term of balance does not exist. Balance indicates no motion; when a scale is perfectly proportioned it doesn’t move. Your life is about proportion, equilibrium, seasons, and ebbs and flows. In reality, balance should be redefined as a blend of your life, not pieces of a pie that must be divided equally. True balance is about flexibility, adaptability, and course corrections on your personal compass.

Thou Shall Practice Self Care. Eating well, getting enough sleep, exercising, taking time to feed and nourish your body, spirit and soul are your divine rights. Successful women make themselves a priority and not an option. Practicing self care allows you to stretch, grow and learn, as well as provide you with comfort, cozy rituals, and time to decompress and recharge. Courageous confident women show the world that they respect and love themselves.

This Too Shall Pass. Courageous confident women know that there will be challenging, trying, and the ‘valley of shadow’ times in their lives, but they do not dwell on them nor do they live in the past or worry about the future. They do not fixate on the things that they do not have the power to change and look for solutions in what they can control. They focus on the present and what the priorities are here and now.

The Sky Is Beyond the Limit. Dreaming big is a state of mind. Why can’t you live your biggest, most audacious, bodacious dreams and desires? Successful women know that ‘playing big’ has nothing to do with quantifying bigness and everything to do with the quality of bigness. The key is knowing and making sure your values are in alignment with your dreams. They are the soul twins of playing big. Courageous, confident women are optimistic, expansive in their thinking, and know that manifesting and action go together.

Follow Thy Passion. The most illuminated and brilliant women heed the call of their passion. It may not be loud trumpets sounding or angels singing; it may be a quiet voice that keeps trying to be heard in your soul. It may not appear as a job or a career; it may feel like a calling or a vocation. However it appears to you, it is irresistible in its siren song. Courageous confident women know there may not be one grand passion, but a ‘portfolio of passions’, it’s about creating a ledger of legacy that reflects the gifts, value and service you bring to the world.

Surround Thyself with Success. Brilliance begets brilliance. Believe it and it will rub some sparkly light on you. One of my mentors refers to this as your Jedi Council. These are the people who are role models, coaches, supporters, and encouragers. These Jedi Knights aid and abet in your awesomeness. They show you the possibilities that you don’t see in yourself. They may be near and dear to you or people you’ve never even met. They inspire, motivate, and kick your gorgeous little tush when needed. Courageous confident women have a wise council of like-minded Jedis on their side.

Energy In=Energy Out. You are the Energy Force in your life. Everything (people, activities, thoughts) either give you energy or drain it from you. The whole concept of imbalance (see Commandment 4) is created because you are doing too many activities that drain you. Courageous confident women know that to live their ideal life they must create boundaries, learn to say a gracious no, and continually seek the energy-giving moments.

Live in the infinite beauty and possibilities of who you are.

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Danielle Miller is a career coach, adviser, and mentor for entrepreneurial-minded women who have big goals and a big vision. Founder of the One Smart Cookie Community and CEO of Danielle M Miller Intl, her goal is to help every woman Create the Life You Crave. Get your Essential Ingredients Playbook at http://www.daniellemmiller.com.

What would it be like if we could remain empowered through even the toughest of times? Don’t you think it would make a difference in the results of the tasks at hand?

Here are some strategies to help you become (and stay) empowered, no matter what your daily circumstances may look like.

1) Gratitude – Be continuously appreciative for EVERYTHING. Even the little things. It’s easy to focus on what’s wrong or what’s not working. And what you resist persists …  so focusing on what’s wrong just creates more things that are ‘wrong’. Being appreciative ongoingly will not only keep you in a better mood, but it also miraculously causes the universe to give you more things to be appreciative for!

2) Build Your Confidence - The more confident we are, the more empowered we tend to feel. Here are some confidence builders:

• Look back over the course of your lifetime, or over the last year, month, or week, and think about all of the incredible feats you have accomplished. Give yourself credit for a job well done, regardless of how big or how small.
• Keep a small journal with you and write down every compliment you receive as you go through each day… ALL of them. As your journal fills up, you’ll be amazed how your confidence level will grow as well.
• Think about all of the great things about you … what a great friend you are, what a great cook you are, the beautiful children you have, your talents, etc. You have every reason to feel confident!

3) Meditate - It’s really easy for us not to find time for silence in our lives. And this silence is a crucial element that will allow us to stay peaceful, sane and empowered. We actually need to disconnect from the ‘world’ on a regular basis in order to get quiet and connect to ‘Source’, the ‘Divine’. This is what grounds us and allows us to hear our voice of inspiration … something we have a really hard time hearing in the midst of all of our daily chaos. So, even if it’s just 15 or 30 minutes a day, making time to be silent will serve you well in all areas of your life.

4) Exercise – Often times we actually use the excuse that we just don’t feel up to exercising. And it’s a ‘catch 22′ situation because one of the main reasons you may not feel ‘up to it’ is because you don’t tend to give your body the kind of respect and attention it deserves by exercising regularly. The more you exercise, the more you WILL feel up to it! And the more committed you are to exercising regularly, the better you will look and feel every day. And you won’t only feel better physically… you’ll feel a lot better mentally and emotionally (and spiritually) as well.

5) Nurture Yourself – Our lives are busy – we’re working, we have children to take care of, we’re socializing, maybe we’re active in our communities … it’s really easy to neglect to take time for ourselves or, more importantly, to MAKE time for ourselves. If we simply wait until we have extra time to do something nurturing, it’s funny how that time just never really seems to show up, isn’t it? By the time we’re done taking care of everyone and everything else, there’s seldom any time left for us. So we have to MAKE time. It’s important to make time … actually SCHEDULE time into your calendar to do some simple things for yourself like:

• Take a hot bath
• Read a great book
• Get a massage
• Get a pedicure
• Take a nap
• Go to a movie
• Etc….

Take this step … start to actually schedule some time for these simple things for yourself and watch what happens. You will start to feel honored and loved, by YOU.

6) Learn - When we are learning, we are growing. And learning new things empowers us. So take the time to take a class or read a book about something that interests you or a new skill you’d like to learn. Not only will you feel empowered, but who knows what doors may open up for you because of the new knowledge you possess!

7) Celebrate - Take the time to celebrate your victories and your successes. So often we finish a project or a task and simply move on to the next thing without even taking the time to acknowledge ourselves. So celebrate! Treat yourself to a nice dinner or a glass of champagne … or call a friend and boast (or simply jump up and down and yell “Woohoo!!!”). But don’t let your victories go unnoticed. Not only will this empower you, but celebrating trains the subconscious mind that victories are good, and you will therefore subconsciously create more victories in your life to celebrate!

Most importantly, the best thing you can do for yourself on a daily basis is to accept yourself for the person you are. You, and all of us, have good points and bad points, strengths and weaknesses … we are human. When you can develop the ability to stand back and look at yourself honestly, and to be able to admit to others as well that you may not be perfect, but you are YOU and that’s all that you can be, you will start to enjoy a greater sense of self-acceptance and self-love … and that’s empowering!

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Amy Starr Allen is a home-based business entrepreneur, author, business trainer & coach, and the founder of Moms Empowering Moms (http://www.MomsEmpoweringMomsCafe.com), an organization designed to empower women and develop leaders within their communities and businesses.