I feel fortunate to have had a career as a television news journalist and talk show producer for about 15 years. Some highlights of my career include winning an Emmy nomination in 2003 for the Best Serious News Story in Los Angeles while working for CBS2’s award-winning Special Assignment investigative team. I helped launch and produce three brand new talk shows– Lifetime Television Network’s first ever talk show on women’s health and a groundbreaking show for the Discovery Health Channel on women’s sexuality as well as a show for USA Network on Love, Sex and Dating.  I also had fun working for NBC4 in Los Angeles producing segments on fashion, beauty, trends, food, restaurants, consumer news and medical issues. For a couple of years I was a television news reporter for the CBS local affiliate in Reno, Nevada and the ABC local stations in Bakersfield and Santa Barbara. I was recruited away from TV for a short while by an advertising agency where I started-up an advertorial magazine for a well-known national department store.  Before my TV career, I was a hairstylist in the San Fernando Valley who was known for pleasing the most difficult customers. I started cosmetology school when I was 16 years old.

I owe my love for cooking, restaurants and eating (actually everything to do with food) to growing up with a dad who owned restaurants and an uncle who owned a popular bakery in San Francisco.  Naturally, I covered L.A.’s restaurant industry as a television producer.  I also started the Homemade Foodies Exchange Club where I live now in Maui, Hawaii– this is a club where fellow foodies make organic homemade foods to exchange with each other.

As a mother and a former investigative, medical and consumer producer, I am compelled to research children’s products and children’s health as well as question the “conventional wisdom” of mainstream parenting practices.  I like to make conscious choices, rather than blindly follow herd mentality.   And because I believe in empowering and supporting women, I formed a support group/playgroup for mothers and children in Maui, Hawaii called Maui Supermamas.  The parenting blog posts come from this research and a collective of the everyday concerns of  moms that I know.

What makes me so sensible is that I’ve had an incredible opportunity to really study people throughout my career and my life. I learned invaluable lessons that you cannot learn in school.  All of my various jobs dealing with people helped me to really understand and have compassion for people from all walks of life.  I have talked one-on-one with exceptionally successful people– a former U.S. President, millionaires, high-powered business people, scientists, famous celebrities, and other amazingly brilliant people.  I have also had intimate conversations with people in deeply emotional, desperate or horrific situations– poverty stricken families, gang leaders, mentally disturbed war veterans, and so many people who just lost a loved one or had tragedy strike.  My hairstyling job was actually the best social studies research where I tracked people’s emotional highs and lows.  I saw the places where people would get lost, stuck, lose hope, inflict self-criticism, lose faith and/or trust in themselves.   As a hairstylist I learned more about the human condition and the need for love and acceptance than the business of styling hair.  My life growing up was also a living lesson.  I was conditioned to be shy, not speak up, not have an opinion, not question authority, not think for myself, and not trust or value myself.  I decided a career as a television producer and reporter would cure me of those disabilities.  It did (along with some wonderful mentors and helpful friends).  It took years to figure out how to overcome the negative conditioning and to learn how to navigate life easily and happily.  Now I would like to share what I have learned with you.

I am currently writing Your Sensible Girlfriend’s Guide To Life e-book series, raising two young boys and happily married living in Maui, Hawaii.