About the Chief Change Agent: I have always loved to learn and valued personal growth highly; but as long as I can remember, it’s always been equally as important to me to share what I learn with those around me. My BS in Special Education as well as most of the jobs I’ve taken were chosen because I knew I would learn something valuable — such as the six years I spent as an Intensive Behavior Interventionist (IBI), working with individuals with developmental disabilities who struggled with life skills, social skills, and inappropriate behavior. It seemed natural that inspiring and empowering others to have the wonderful things I’ve learned would eventually become my business.

Why Monkey99? There is a passage in Dr. Lyall Watson’s Lifetide about a group of macaques in Japan that researchers were studying. The study involved leaving sweet potatoes for the monkeys to find and observing what they did with them. The younger monkeys figured out that they were pleasant to eat if they washed them first and the behavior soon spread throughout the community. Macaques in other communities were soon observed washing their sweet potatoes as well. Watson posited that, once a critical number of monkeys learned the skill, the skill became part of the collective unconscious and all macaques would intuit it. For the sake of his argument, he used 100 as the critical number necessary. He also suggested that this could happen with any idea in any population.

    I always liked that story; it strengthened my belief that I could profoundly change the world. I thought of myself as the 99th Monkey, which meant to me that the amount of effort it would take to reach critical mass, sharing what I’d learned with others, was within my power. Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. It inspires and empowers me to do the work.

If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right. – Henry Ford

What’s with the logo? Another inspiring influence for me was the novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Pay It Forward, which was made into a movie. As part of a social studies class project to promote community consciousness, 12-year-old Trevor devises an amazing plan: If he could have a profound effect on just three people, and each of those three would do the same, and so on, then in just 25 iterations, the entire population of the world would be affected. In my logo, each monkey is reaching out to three other monkeys.