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On this page you can view the schedule of interviews for each day, read a brief description of the talk and the bio of each speaker.

Use this TIME ZONE CONVERTER to find out the time of each interview in your area.

Also look for special BONUS GIFTS offered by some of our speakers, just below their bio.

Karen Wyatt, MD completed Family Practice Residency and a Fellowship in Psychiatry at the University of Utah. She spent many years of her clinical career as a hospice medical director and has written extensively about end-of-life care, including the bookWhat Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying. She is passionate about helping people find meaning and purpose even during the most difficult times of life.

Dr. Wyatt recently spoke as a panelist for the Care Planning Hearing for a workgroup from the Department of Health and Human Services. She is also a founding member of the Integral Health and Medicine Center and teaches the application of Integral Theory to medical care, particularly at the end of life. She has twice testified at Senate briefings on the cutting-edge model of integrated medical and behavioral health care she helped implement at her clinic for the uninsured.

Dr. Wyatt also hosts a radio show entitled What Really Matters: Lessons from the End-of-Life, which features interviews and conversations about all aspects of life and death. She has won numerous awards for her volunteer service including the Spirit of the American Woman Award and being named one of Utah’s 100 Notable Women.

Website: www.karenwyattmd.com

Jeremy Bloom founded Wish of a Lifetime as a tribute to his beloved grandmother, Donna Wheeler. Bloom’s passion is to inspire an entire generation and to create a cultural shift on how society views aging.

Bloom believes that senior citizens do not have to stop dreaming or living a life of purpose. By granting lifelong wishes to seniors who have overcome tremendous challenges in their own lives, Wish of a Lifetime spreads inspirational stories of hope.

The organization is built upon the principles that seniors should be respected, honored and supported. Bloom is dedicated to recognizing their service to country and community as well as utilizing their wealth of wisdom. Wish of a Lifetime celebrates seniors and makes lifelong Wishes come true.

Bloom fulfilled his own dreams by becoming a two-time Olympian and three-time World Champion snow skier. He also was an All-American football player at the University of Colorado and spent three seasons in the NFL. Currently, Bloom is a college football broadcaster for Fox Sports Southwest and has appeared on ESPN and NBC as an on-air analyst.

In addition, Bloom completed an entrepreneurship program at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Co-founder of Integrate, Winner of the 2011 American Business Awards New Company of the Year and a recent recipient of the 2011 Civic Leader Award by the National Consortium of Academics.

Website: www.seniorwish.org

Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D. is a social anthropologist, researcher, writer, and charismatic public speaker. She is currently the President Emeritus and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she has also served as President and CEO. Additionally, she is a Senior Scientist at the California Pacific Medical Center, where she focuses on health and healing.

For more than three decades, Marilyn has been a leader in the field of consciousness studies. Her research and extensive publications focus on personal and social transformation, cultural pluralism, and mind body medicine.

She has a depth of leadership experience in government, business, and the not-for-profit sectors. Her broad and varied work has given her a unique ability to help individuals and organizations identify and develop personal and interpersonal skills and capacities needed by 21st century leaders. She is currently producing a feature film with Deepak Chopra, "Death Makes Life Possible."

Website: www.marilynschlitz.com

Lawrence George, MD is a 1981 graduate of the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota. He completed his residency in family practice in 1984 at the University of Utah, McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden. He received board certification through the American Board of Family Practice in 1984 and currently practices medicine in Silverthorne, Colorado.

As a family practitioner, Dr. George is trained to provide comprehensive health care for the individual and family. He provides a complete spectrum of family care including pediatrics, adolescent, adult and geriatric care. He has a special interest in Sports Medicine, Integral Medicine and spirituality in the practice of medicine.

Website: http://www.highcountryhealth.com/doctors/lawrence-e-george-md/

J. Donald Schumacher, PsyD, is the President and CEO, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Dr. Schumacher has more than 30 years experience in hospice and palliative care administration. Since 2002, he has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), which is the largest nonprofit leadership organization representing hospice and palliative care programs and professionals in the world. In 2003, he was appointed as the President and CEO of NHPCO’s subsidiary organization, the National Hospice Foundation. He became the President of FHSSA (originally the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa) in 2004. He also became the President of The Hospice Action Network in 2007.

From 1989 until he joined NHPCO in 2002, Dr. Schumacher served as the President and CEO of The Center for Hospice and Palliative Care, Buffalo, New York. During his tenure, he led the development of an integrated hospice campus in the Buffalo, New York area, launching a variety of hospice-related organizations including nursing homes and mental health and pediatric care facilities, as well as a stellar bereavement education program. Among his other notable professional endeavors, Dr. Schumacher was the President and Founder of The Hospice of Mission Hill, Boston, Massachusetts, which was established as one of the first HIV/AIDS hospices in the U.S.

Dr. Schumacher is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York and Massachusetts and holds a doctorate degree in psychology from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Boston, Massachusetts. In 2005, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he earned his M.S. degree in counseling psychology.

Website: http://www.nhpco.org

http://www.caringinfo.org       

Cathy Severson, MS received a Masters Degree in Career Counseling from California State University Northridge and is the founder of Passport to Purpose, a professional and personal development company. Specializing in adult transition issues, she helps connect to their Purpose, Passion and Potential. She is the creator of the powerful VISTa Life/Career Cards, a counseling tool used by therapists and career counselors around the world. Cathy is also a grandmother and an award winning watercolor artist who shows and sells throughout the Southwest.

Website: www.RetireWOW.com

Laura Schlafly is the founder of Lake Oswego, Oregon based Career Choices with Laura, the business where she inspires and guides Baby Boomers and mid-career professionals to investigate – and then launch – “Second Act”, or Encore Careers after they reach 50+.

With a BA in Japanese studies from Ohio State, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and being a serial Boomer entrepreneur herself, Laura has 20 years of hands-on, practical experience in product marketing, field sales, and small business development.

Laura is also a private pilot, musician, dancer, and life-long student of Asian cultures and languages.

In her current role as an Encore Career Coach, Professional Speaker and Writer, Laura combines these skills and interests – plus the wealth of knowledge gleaned from her own five careers – into a tailored strategy that helps her clients uncover their own core Passions and apply them to a motivating career with Purpose and a Paycheck attached.

Website: www.CareerChoicesWithLaura.com

Lisa Powers, Esq. is the founder and CEO of The Powers Law Firm, P.C., located in Rochester, NY. She believes you don't have to stumble through the maze of financial, legal and medical challenges alone. Whether a crisis has hit, or you're planning for the future to ensure long-term security, Lisa is committed to helping families plan so they avoid being victims of circumstance when tragedy strikes.

Lisa started her firm in 2008 after growing increasingly frustrated and disillusioned by her career in traditional firms that treated clients as transactions instead of people. Lisa and her devoted team assist individuals, families and small business owners with the full range of estate planning and elder law services, including wills, powers of attorney and health care proxies, trust and estate administration, and many other services. Lisa dedicates herself to protecting who and what you love the most and helping you leave a legacy of more than just dollars and cents.

After repeated requests for her help outside New York State, the only state where she practices law, Lisa developed The Caregiver's Toolkit for LIFE, a 4-part training series designed to help caregivers anywhere get the answers they need on legal, insurance and financial problems to pick the right advisors for their care team. Armed with Lisa's training, caregivers save money, time and heartache, ultimately getting peace of mind and more moments to treasure with their loved ones instead of frantically squeezing in moments and trying to forget their fears.

Website: www.powerselderlaw.com

Vickie Epstein

This native Wisconsinite is married, has two children and three grandchildren.

Website: www.avenidas.org

www.vtvnetwork.org

Paul Malley is President of Aging with Dignity, a national non-profit organization based in Tallahassee, Florida. In addition to directing Aging with Dignity’s many activities, Malley has also guided the efforts of several aging advocacy groups to improve policy on advance care planning. He was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to the Florida delegation of the 2005 White House Conference on Aging, an event held once every ten years to shape public policy on issues related to aging.

The work of Aging with Dignity and Paul Malley have been featured in literally hundreds of stories in the national news media, including USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, Time and Consumer Reports, as well as on the CBS, NBC and ABC-TV evening news programs and on CNN and MSNBC cable TV shows.

Malley holds a Master of Arts degree in Communications from Florida State University. He joined Aging with Dignity in 1998 and was named its President in 2002. He and his wife, Almira, live in Tallahassee, Florida and have five children.

Website: www.AgingWithDignity.org

Ira Byock, MD is Professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He served as Director of Palliative Medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire from 2003 through July 2013.

Dr. Byock has been involved in hospice and palliative care since 1978, during his residency. At that time he helped found a hospice home care program for the indigent population served by the university hospital and county clinics of Fresno, California. He is a Past President (1997) of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. During the 1990s he was a co-founder and principal investigator for the Missoula Demonstration Project, a community-based organization in Montana dedicated to the research and transformation of end-of-life experience locally, as a demonstration of what is possible nationally. From 1996 through 2006, he served as Director for Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care, a national grant program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr. Byock has authored numerous articles on the ethics and practice of hospice, palliative and end-of-life care. His first book, Dying Well, (1997) has become a standard in the field. The Four Things That Matter Most, (2004) is used as a counseling tool widely by palliative care and hospice programs, as well as within pastoral care. His most recent book, The Best Care Possible (March 2012) tackles the crisis that surrounds serious illness and dying in America and his quest to transform care through the end of life. It has been praised by the Wall Street Journal and recognized by POLITICO as a key issue book for the 2012 presidential campaign, and won the Annual Books for a Better Life Award in the category of Wellness.

Dr. Byock has been a consistent advocate for the voice and rights of dying patients and their families. He has been the recipient of the National Hospice Organization’s Person of the Year (1995), the National Coalition of Cancer Survivorship’s Natalie Davis Spingarn Writers Award (2000), the American College of CHEST Physicians Roger Bone Memorial Lecture Award (2003) and the Outstanding Colleague Award (2008) of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains. Community Leadership Award, American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (2011), Compassion in Action Award, Santa Clara University (2011),

He has been a featured guest on numerous national television and radio programs, including NPR: All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, and On Being, CBS 60 Minutes, Fox and Friends, and PBS The News Hour.  

Website: www.thebestcarepossible.com

Nanette Randall enjoyed a long career as a business partner to operations, marketing, and sales leaders as a human resources associate and confidante. She worked for both small and large organizations such as Popeye's Chicken, Price Waterhouse, Wendy's International, and MoneyGram.

After a layoff in early 2006, Nanette embarked on a new challenge when she created Memoirs by Design, a personal history business. She believes everything up to that point was a primer for what she is doing today. Personal history is her life's work, and she is honored to have helped dozens of individuals, families, and small businesses capture their stories.

Nanette builds trust and uses her sensitivity, curiosity, and compassion to help others remember their favorite memories about people, places, and things, from earliest years to present life. Interviews are saved to CD's. When books and self-publishing projects are commissioned, Nanette carefully transcribes, writes and organizes what has been shared into a legacy treasure that includes cherished photographs. Books are for personal use, but they are more than that. They are the stories that did not get away. And, Memoirs by Design Press offers publishing solutions to fit most budgets.

Website: www.memoirsbydesign.com

Tarron Estes is an Associate Clinical Faculty with the Watson Caring Science Institute of Boulder, Colorado. She is a lead facilitator for the Human Caring Program, a Caring Science healing modality training for medical professionals in large systems such as Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Administration Medical Systems.

She has taught internationally in Cambodia and Thailand as Yoga Master & Healing Artist in Residence at the Hotel de la Paix and Anantara Resorts. Her specialization is transformational learning, an experiential education model that unites personal development at the deepest healing levels with organizational development at system-wide levels to produce life transformation for individuals, families, and clinical professionals, as well as culture change for organizations.

Tarron’s educational programs use a variety of healing modalities, including dream translation, body-oriented healing tools such as intensive activities in breath-work, emotional release, forgiveness, spiritual connection, and grounding in the unitary field of consciousness. Her "Best Life Care Visionary " has been used in long-term care, hospice, and healthcare organizations to inspire and manifest purpose in life, fulfillment in relationships, and conscious end of life care planning and practices.

Tarron is also the owner of ElderSpa Innovations, a caregiver training and senior community innovation consultancy that focuses on supporting bedside caregivers in nursing home settings to be authentically present, create healing environments, develop caring relationships, and fulfill the healing needs and desires of families and elders nearing end of life. ElderSpa Innovations creates a new model of holistic care and services matching the lifestyle's of baby boomers who want their families to experience comforting palliative care and spa treatments and enviroments for their parents and themselves. Systems who complete the certification for "ElderVsions Care" adopt a trademarked model of education and marketing that informs and transforms prospective families, staff and community members.

Website: www.tarronestesandassociates.com

Merilynne Rush, RN is a retired nurse and home birth midwife. She received her nursing degree at the University of Michigan and during her 25 years of professional life has been helping people make empowering choices concerning their health care. She has also worked as a hospice nurse, caring for the dying person and the family, and she has witnessed the benefit of walking through rather than around profound emotion.

Currently Merilynne works as a consultant for families seeking alternative ways to say goodbye to a loved one, specifically home funerals and green burials. She is on the Board of Directors of the National Home Funeral Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating and empowering families to care for their own dead. In addition, Merilynne has hosted several Death Cafes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Website: www.AfterDeathHomeCare.com

Kayla Hrabak is the Communications Manager at United Tissue Network, where she empowers people who want to make a difference through whole-body donation by uniting them with professionals dedicated to the advancement of medical technology, training and education.

In her current role, Kayla leads the communications department at both the Arizona and Oklahoma locations to increase community awareness. Her focus involves leading the marketing initiatives for potential donors and clients, as well as monitoring the overall health of the department. Kayla is both passionate and dedicated in educating the community about the benefits of being a whole-body donor. Her driven attitude lends itself to juggling and tackling any number of tasks, big or small.

She has earned a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations and Advertising from Northern Arizona University.

Website: www.unitedtissue.org

Eldon Taylor, Ph.D., is a world renowned author, dynamic speaker, former criminalist and one of the world’s foremost experts on preconscious information processing, who’s prestigious career over the past twenty-five years, has taken him to packed lecture halls throughout the U.S., U.K., Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico and Malaysia. His unique, charismatic and energetic style captivates his audiences, compelling them to take control of their life with a style and approach that is unique and empowering. He is the author of five books regarding the subject of subliminal communication and the inventor of the proven and patented technology InnerTalk®.

Eldon is also the author of more than three hundred InnerTalk® personal empowerment audio and video programs and his work has been published in the likes of Newsweek and Annals of Psychotherapy. In his latest International best-selling book, Choices and Illusions, Eldon shares his life story, integrated with his work and research, that reveals how and why we get locked into self-imposed limitations and false self-images—”negative self-talk”—and demonstrates how we can retrain our mind with positive “self-talk.” Moreover, he qualifies us to make an immediate life change just by revealing how we can look at things differently and therefore affect our entire existence. Indeed, he makes the process of change so simple and clear that his readers and listeners alike walk away with the feeling of great hope and self-realization.

Eldon believes that self-empowerment is a journey, not a rags-to-riches scheme. In fact, his business operates on a business model different from most. He offers many free products and website content designed just to help others. He shares his genuine and candid belief that the spiritual content of his programs and in his work are essential to the success of what he does and who he is, holding steadfast that this is what contributes to everyone’s happiness, health, and longevity—his research and data conclusively supporting these beliefs.

Eldon has earned doctorates in clinical and pastoral psychology. He is an ordained interdenominational minister and a Fellow in the American Psychotherapy Association. Listed in more than a dozen Who’s Who publications, he was awarded the 2005 International Peace Prize by the United Cultural Convention for his “outstanding personal achievements to the good of society as a whole.”

Website: www.eldontaylor.com

Rev. Maria Dancing Heart Hoaglund was born in Tokyo, Japan, daughter of Lutheran missionaries. She spent her childhood growing up in Japan, attending Japanese public schools through the eighth grade. As a result, she is bilingual and bicultural, and has used her language and cultural skills in a variety of ways through the years. After finishing high school at Canadian Academy in Kobe, Japan, she moved to the United States for college. She graduated from Yale College, and later attended seminary and received her Masters of Divinity from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1984.

In 1985 she began parish ministry at Church of the Crossroads in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she was ordained in the United Church of Christ. She continued in parish ministry for ten years, serving a variety of U.C.C. churches in Hawaii and in the Great Northwest.

She changed her focus of ministry in 1995 when she began working as a bereavement coordinator for a hospice program in the Puget Sound area. She added spiritual counseling to her repertoire that same year, and has continued with this work to this day. Maria also trained in spiritual direction (1994-'97), and serves as a spiritual director and consultant. Because of her broad universal perspective, her ministry has an "inter-faith" quality. She also continues to preach and perform weddings, memorial services, funerals, and other rituals, sharing her universalist perspective.

Maria self-published her books, The Last Adventure of Life: Sacred Resources for Transition (July, 2005) and The Most Important Day of Your Life: Are You Ready? (June, 2010). In May of 2008, a 2nd edition of The Last Adventure was published through Findhorn Press with a new subtitle: Sacred Resources for Living and Dying from a Hospice Counselor. A third edition came out through Finch Publishing of Australia in 2009. These books can also be helpful for those who desire to deepen their spiritual life by examining their questions and doubts around death and dying.

Maria is also passionate about using the holistic modalities at the end of life. She has developed some unique and beautiful "Soul Bundles" - Japanese style. The bundles and essential oils & CDs are available at: www.soulbaskets.com

Karen Wyatt, MD completed Family Practice Residency and a Fellowship in Psychiatry at the University of Utah. She spent many years of her clinical career as a hospice medical director and has written extensively about end-of-life care, including the bookWhat Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying. She is passionate about helping people find meaning and purpose even during the most difficult times of life.

Dr. Wyatt recently spoke as a panelist for the Care Planning Hearing for a workgroup from the Department of Health and Human Services. She is also a founding member of the Integral Health and Medicine Center and teaches the application of Integral Theory to medical care, particularly at the end of life. She has twice testified at Senate briefings on the cutting-edge model of integrated medical and behavioral health care she helped implement at her clinic for the uninsured.

Dr. Wyatt also hosts a radio show entitled What Really Matters: Lessons from the End-of-Life, which features interviews and conversations about all aspects of life and death. She has won numerous awards for her volunteer service including the Spirit of the American Woman Award and being named one of Utah’s 100 Notable Women.

Website: www.karenwyattmd.com

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