Motivational Speaking
Jamie’s expertise comes from her life experiences as the founder/CEO of two non-profit organizations, and as a mother, grandmother and friend. In both her professional and personal lives, she has been bothered, moved, outraged, and has taken action to create change. She believes that the key is staying bothered and being authentic by keep doing you.
-
Secrets of Staying Motivated to Make a Difference
-
How to Build and Maintain A Nonprofit Organization
-
Keep Doing You
Secrets of Staying Motivated to Make a Difference
Like many of us, Jamie has been bothered most of her life. Not just about the everyday annoyances like someone cutting in front of her on the highway, but the big, life-changing issues. But she also believes that being bothered is a good thing – as long as you can identify it, take action, and stay bothered – in other words, turn the bother into something positive and meaningful. She likes to say that success comes to those who try. And try. And keep trying.
Take action and stay bothered – in other words, turn the bother into something positive and meaningful.
This idea was driven home for Jamie 20 years ago when she visited Cambodia for the first time. She saw children who had to pay to go to school, or didn’t go at all. Those who did attend would often wait for teachers who never showed up. The dirt-floor classrooms were dilapidated and windowless. There were no books or school supplies; nothing but an interest among the children to learn. That really bothered her. So she took it upon herself to do something and founded Caring for Cambodia (CFC). Because of CFC’s volunteers, dedicated staff and faculty on the ground, its 21 schools have become the models for all of Cambodia.
Jamie’s audiences walk away understanding that paradigm change is possible by staying motivated to make a difference. They learn how an idea like making Cambodian schools great is formulated, and then what it takes to bring a vision to fruition. She’ll describe the bumps in the road, the highs and the lows, including a massive deception by CFC staff in Cambodia whom she considered her colleagues and friends. But mostly, Jamie presents strategies for staying bothered and focused. She shows her audiences how to find something, anything that is good, and build on it until it has flowered.
Paradigm change is possible by staying motivated to make a difference.
“After hearing Jamie speak, I mustered up the courage to become involved in local politics because I realized if not me, then who?”
“Jamie makes taking on a cause seem doable, with the caveat that you can’t give up when things gets tough.”
How to Build and Maintain A Nonprofit Organization
Okay, so you have a bother, a passion about something important to you. Should you start a nonprofit organization?
After two decades in the field, Jamie has a clear answer: Maybe!
In this dynamic presentation, Jamie explains how to maintain and finance a nonprofit; how to run it; how to fundraise; how to adapt it to changing needs; and most importantly, how to make it sustainable. For her, the most important requirement for success is to build relationships with like-minded people, and to believe in the people you lead. This has been especially important, given that for the past decade Jamie has been in the United States and CFC’s work is in a foreign country. This arrangement has required an enormous amount of trust on both continents, especially during the first few years when they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Don’t start something you don’t want to lead!
Jamie reveals the why’s and how’s of building and maintaining a nonprofit so that audience members can decide for themselves if they should create a new organization, or team up with an existing one, and most importantly, if they are up to the task. (Hence the “maybe” that started this section.) It‘s not for the weak, or as she says, “Don’t start something you don’t want to lead!”
For the experienced nonprofit leader, Jamie’s twenty years in the field provides the perfect background to focus on issues like “bad founder’s syndrome”; building high, not wide; changing courses when necessary; and sustainability. She has something to say for both the novice and the veteran.
The most important requirement for success is to build relationships with like-minded people, and to believe in the people you lead.
“I was thinking about starting a 501(c)(3) to help children who have incarcerated mothers. But after hearing Jamie, I decided to team up with an existing organization.”
“As the founder of an NGO, I heard invaluable and often unexpected tips about maintaining a nonprofit. In fact, I came back and told my board chairman to fire me if I ever get stuck in my ways, a major symptom of the bad founder’s syndrome!”
Keep Doing You
“On a particularly difficult day during COVID, when schools all over the world were shut down, my two sons had returned from college and my teenage daughter was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t see her friends. All of us were feeling low. But then on my computer was a sticky note in my daughter’s hand that simply said, “Keep Doing You.”
Find tools to be the authentic you.
For Jamie, the idea of being true to yourself is the key to any success. We all know it’s easy to slip off the balance beam. In this very personal presentation, Jamie describes the challenges in her own life – including a high school trauma, divorce, cancer, a severe allergic reaction which almost killed her, and one son’s teenage battle with alcohol and another with depression.
Learning to find the tools to being authentic has been Jamie’s ongoing commitment to life. Whether it’s exercising at 6 a.m. before a day full of meetings, hanging out with old friends at a rock concert, reading an inspirational quote, or writing a new book, Jamie is on it.
Her audiences know it and feel it, so that they, too, can meet life’s challenges with creativity and passion in order to keep doing you.
You, too, can meet life’s challenges with creativity and passion in order to keep doing you!
“Sometimes we need someone like Jamie to reflect back to us that staying true to our ourselves, including our passions and commitments, overrides worries and fears.”
“Hearing how Jamie overcame personal adversities through both hard work, but also through deep connections with friends and other support systems, was enormously helpful.”
“Bravo! Here’s to a woman like Jamie who picks herself up, dusts herself off and stands strong, ready for the next challenge. We all could use a dose of keep doing you!”