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Athena Awards

Ex-Cop Urges All to Act Now on the Life They Want

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Julie Jones will share motivational message at ATHENA Awards.

After years of serving as a sheriff’s deputy, police patrol officer and SWAT team member, Julie Jones has given a lot of thought to lives that ended early, dreams that never got started and destinies left unfulfilled. “It was really heart-breaking to deliver death notifications to the loved ones of the deceased,” she told a packed conference room of businesspeople in Phoenix last April. “There are no guarantees in life. There is no promise of tomorrow.”

Despite witnessing life’s tragedies, Jones loved being a cop. Fit, blonde and 6 feet tall, she has a presence that commands attention. In her law enforcement career, she used her athleticism to outrun suspects and her compassion to gain respect. Today, as a productivity and breakthrough coach and award-winning motivational speaker, her toolbelt is loaded with fun, enthusiasm and outrageousness instead of weapons, pepper spray and handcuffs. “I like to bring joy and energy to the room,” she said.

Jones made the career change from cop to coach after the deaths of her mother and grandmother. “I knew I wanted to help people in a different way. My mom died at 59 years old. Thirty days later, my grandmother was gone. Life can change quickly. I don’t want to live with regrets and I don’t want others to do that either. I teach clients how to break through their fears, live a life without regret and have the courage to be who they are meant to be. My message is: ‘It’s your life, you create it for yourself.’”

Clients and businesses come to Jones for many reasons: to live a more adventurous life, to get out of their own way, to launch a business, level up their skills or streamline their productivity. “I help them figure out where their genius lies, where their frustration lies and why they are struggling to get things done.”

On stage, she empowers those in the audience “to get off the hamster wheel of life.” She often hears people complain about being pulled in too many directions and reminds them that “No,” is a complete sentence. “Most people have a hard time setting boundaries. I train people to use the ‘Do not disturb’ feature on their phones and stay focused on what they are doing.”

She believes in balance and counterbalance. “Work hard and play hard. And when you’re not working, digitally detox and focus on the people around you.”

As a coach for the last 15 years, Jones says her clients appreciate her creativity and innovative spirit. “I always have a million solutions for any given item and a different way of looking at challenges. I will present solutions, ask my clients to pick one or two and then hold them accountable to their goals.”

The No. 1 reason that prevents people from taking action to change their lives to the ones they want is fear, she says. “Fear paralyzes a lot of people. I think sometimes they are so paralyzed because they don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t know where we got this idea. I tell clients that done is better than perfect. Perfectionism is self-sabotaging. It keeps you safe by never putting yourself out there, but it also keeps you stuck.”

What she loves most is witnessing the growth and excitement in people who make bold moves to change their lives. “One guy was 28 years into a job that he absolutely hated. He read my book, ‘Stop Waiting Start Living,’ while he was recovering from surgery. He told me it inspired him to start his own business. After reading the book a second time, his ‘aha moment’ was about living through the filter of joy and happiness.”

Jones is an international bestselling author of six books, has produced her own TV show, “Stop Waiting Start Living,” on the Zondra network and is the host of the Get S#*t Done podcast. She is a certified master practitioner of neuro linguistic programming (NLP), and also certified in mental and emotional release as well as hypnosis. As a Working Genius facilitator, Julie’s primary role is to help individuals and teams discover their working geniuses through a structured process. This process involves exploring different aspects such as natural talents, skills, passions and motivations.

Jones is scheduled to deliver the keynote presentation at the 4th Annual Quad Cities ATHENA Leadership Awards, presented by Quad Cities Business News, 3-5 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 24, at Starting Point in the Prescott Gateway Mall.

Nominations are being accepted now for three award categories. In addition to the traditional ATHENA Leadership Award, there will also be the ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award as well as the ATHENA Organizational Leadership Award. QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

To submit a nomination and secure tickets to the event, go to www.PrescottAthena.com.

Courtesy Photo: Award-winning speaker, international best-selling author and productivity and breakthrough coach Julie Jones teaches clients how to break through their fears, live a life without regret and have the courage to be who they are meant to be.

Don’t Play Games You Can’t Win

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Now, more than 7,000 people have received this award in eight countries.

We like to tell ourselves we can do anything if we just put our mind to it, but I’d like to encourage all to acknowledge when we are in a game we can’t win, and for heaven’s sake, stop playing it!

Growing up in Phoenix, balmy summertime evenings were meant for Kick the Can, Tag, Red Rover and any number of unsupervised activities that included wildly racing around the neighborhood and usually some blood.

My neighborhood was all boys. So, you can imagine my surprise when I showed up at their Cub Scouts meeting in my brother’s old Cub Scouts uniform and got snubbed by my friends. I didn’t get the hint entirely when they said, “You can’t be here!” So, they decided to just ditch me.

They took off running. Unfortunately for them, I had a lot of training in running from nightly games of Tag, Hide and Seek, etc., and kept up with the fastest boys. While many of them were doubled over wheezing from the failed attempt, a grownup had to tell me that, even though I was good at that game, I couldn’t win the prize I really wanted, which was a seat in the Cub Den.

Grownup games are even more confusing. I’m inspired today by those who recognize when they are in a game they can’t win and instead of feeling sorry for themselves and pushing back, they create their own game.

Martha Mayhood Mertz is one such grownup. In Corporate America of the 1980s, she was in awe of the brilliance, creativity and competence of the professional women around her. But she was confused when they weren’t getting acknowledged and being promoted and honored in the workplace at the same rate as the men. The business culture she was experiencing had a way of overlooking women. Recognizing she and others were in a game they couldn’t win, she started her own game, the international ATHENA Awards program.

Mertz set out to have 10 custom-made ATHENA sculptures created to honor one woman of leadership excellence each year for the next decade. She figured by then, the culture would change. It didn’t. So, today, she continues to cultivate and recognize leaders and organizations that promote women. Now, more than 7,000 people have received this award in eight countries.

Quad Cities Business News is carrying that ATHENA torch in Prescott. On Sunday, Sept. 24, the Fourth Annual Prescott-Area ATHENA Awards High Tea will be honoring individuals and organizations in three categories: the ATHENA Leadership Award for an individual, the ATHENA Organizational Leadership Award for a business or organization that develops and supports women leaders; and the ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award. Nominations are being accepted now. For more information, go to https://prescottathena.com.

Mega-successful businessman Ed Hajim is another such grownup. When he was rejected for membership at a golf club on Nantucket Island, where he lived half the year, he didn’t fight the decision. He didn’t rally his friends to come to his aid. He didn’t get his feelings hurt. He simply built his own golf course. He says that decision turned out to be a wonderful experience.

“That’s why I say, ‘Never be a victim.’ I could have been a victim. I could have fought that. But starting my own golf club was a great experience,” he said. “Building a golf course is art with a bulldozer. It was absolutely spectacular! We’ve changed the lives of 500 families over 25 years and we’re now the largest charity on the island. We send two kids to college now every year and we just started a vocational program, which is one of my many crusades right now. Last year, we sent 10 kids to vocational colleges.” QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

Read more about Ed Hajim’s extraordinary life and his new leadership storybook, “The Island of the Four Ps: A Modern Fable About Preparing for Your Future,” on page 6. Hear more hard-earned wisdom and leadership tips from him on Zonie Living: https://starworldwidenetworks.com/episodes/exploring-the-island-of-the-four-ps-to-plan-your-future-with-business-leader-extraordinaire-ed-hajim-video.

Bonnie Stevens is a public relations consultant. She can be reached at bonnie.stevens@gmail.com.

Mentoring Through Quad Cities ATHENA Leadership Awards

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Nominations being accepted for September High Tea.

The Quad Cities ATHENA Leadership Awards not only celebrate, recognize and honor women for their leadership skills, career achievements, community service and mentorship, they also promote what leadership looks like. ATHENA recipients say this is powerful because younger or less experienced women in the workplace can identify local role models they can talk to, observe in action and learn from.

“Leaders become mentors for others and impact future growth,” said 2022 ATHENA recipient Teri Drew, executive director of NACOG’s Yavapai County Workforce Development, in a 2022 QCBN interview. “My parents and siblings were and continue to be my mentors. They taught me what to and not to do growing up, and those strong ethics pay off.”

On Sunday, Sept. 24, women from across the region will come together at Starting Point in the Prescott Gateway Mall for the 4th Annual Quad Cities ATHENA Leadership Awards High Tea, presented by Quad Cities Business News. They will hear stories of struggle and triumph, perseverance through fear and how to tap into their inner strength in times of adversity. They will also learn how women lean into their core values and their hopes for the future.

“I believe my life is a blessing and given as a blessing. Giving back is just what I believe I need to do. Mentoring others is one of my tenets and receiving the ATHENA award strengthened that,” said 2018 Flagstaff ATHENA recipient Theresa Bierer, an associate professor of practice in management in the W.A. Franke College of Business at Northern Arizona University. “In our lives, everyone is so busy, but what really makes the fabric of a community is people who step outside of themselves and put others and community first. To me, that’s what the ATHENA Award embodies.”

This year, QCBN will recognize an individual with the traditional ATHENA Leadership Award and also will present the ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award. In addition, for the first time in Northern Arizona, the Quad Cities ATHENA Leadership Awards will celebrate a business or organization that supports, develops and honors women leaders with the ATHENA Organizational Leadership Award.

Individuals, businesses and organizations are encouraged to nominate extraordinary women leaders who are making a difference in their communities and pioneering a path for others to impact the future.

“My hope for young women entering the workplace is for them to do what they love and love what they do,” added Drew.

Nominations are being accepted until Friday, Aug. 4, at prescottathena.com. QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

Photos by Kay Lyons: QCBN women have been instrumental in bringing the ATHENA Leadership Awards to Prescott. Photographed here are QCBN Co-Owner Amy Bix, Editor Bonnie Stevens and Advertising Manager Ann Herrington. 

Called to the Stage

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Actress Robyn Allen is named Prescott-area ATHENA.

Stage actress Robyn Allen has spent more than 30 years in the entertainment industry, but says she had to overcome her shyness to perform.

“I was always very shy,” she said, “but if I had written a poem, I would just stand up and recite it in front of my relatives. I think that’s how they tricked me into auditioning for plays in school.”

Soon she found her own trick, which was to become completely immersed in the character and stay focused.

Allen shared her story with more than 100 people at the 2021 Prescott-area ATHENA Awards, Sunday, Sept. 19, at Goods from the Garden, where she was honored with the leadership award, sponsored by Quad Cities Business News and Prescott Woman Magazine.

“I was shocked and so honored to be a finalists alongside those women,” she said. “I really wanted to take a moment and learn who they were and what their journeys were that got us to this place.”

Allen, the executive director of Suze’s Prescott Center for the Arts (PCA) since 2016, is adamant that success doesn’t happen on our own. “It takes an enormous amount of support. We have hundreds of volunteers [at PCA]. I have an amazing staff and have always had a great team around me, supporting and surrounding me,” she said as she acknowledged her husband, Al, and thanked her team at PCA.

Besides acting, Allen’s career has included producing, directing and arts leadership. She received her education at Arizona State University under the direction of Marshall W. Mason and at the New Actors Workshop in New York. She served as artistic director of Theater Works in Peoria and was a founding member of the acclaimed Algonquin Theater Co., in Phoenix.

She has received 38 ariZoni nominations and 14 awards for her work in theater, including best director, best actress, best supporting actress and best guest artist. In addition, she has been featured in The Arizona Republic’s Who’s Who of Women in Theater.

One of her favorite productions was “Sweeney Todd,” for which she won an ariZoni Award for directing. Allen says her most fun experience was participating in a comedy horror film called “‘Netherbeast Incorporated’ about an undead telephone company staffed by flesh-eating, vampire-like employees. I worked with a lot of great comics in that film like Darrell Hammond, Dave Foley and Steve Burns. It was shot in Arizona.”

Most recently, under Allen’s leadership, Suze’s Prescott Center for the Arts received a nomination for the 2020 Governor’s Arts Awards, the 2020 Prescott Chamber Business Excellence in Arts and Culture Award and the 2020 Twink Lynch Organizational Achievement Award, on the national level. Noted in the Twink Lynch acknowledgment was the organization’s ability to redirect resources to create PCA Serves, which addresses the needs of the center’s mostly elderly patron population and served the broader community during the pandemic.

At the same time, the center had engaged in a capital campaign to build a new studio theater, and expand rehearsal and classroom space to better serve the community’s youth and create an additional art gallery.However, Allen says the campaign, “Setting the Stage,” was put on hold while the group focused on helping the community maneuver through the pandemic. Nonetheless, an anonymous donor came through, enabling the center to move forward with its expansion plans. As a result, PCA was able to break ground in July.

Allen was born and raised in Phoenix. Her husband grew up in Mayer. While visiting his family, she was introduced to Prescott and had always kept the idea of living there one day in her mind. The two made the move from Phoenix to Prescott in 2015. “Literally six weeks after I got here, the one job I do opened up at Prescott Center for the Arts. It fit like a glove.”

She planned to work as the interim director until they filled the position through a national search. “I fell in love with the community, the gallery, the center and everything about it.”

She decided she should apply for the job and the center agreed. “It’s just been go, go, go since then,” she said.

“I love everything about community theater, especially watching the growth of individuals and working with our youth,” she said. “The arts enhance a community. There really is something for everyone. You don’t have to be a performer, you can be active in other departments. We have opportunities for our youth to learn theater management and administrative skills. We need designers in lights and costume and enjoy teaching these skills to our volunteers. Community theater is a great place to get your feet wet. When I first started directing, I knew I’d have to learn how to do it all and you learn it quickly.”

Allen has been married for 34 years. She and her husband have two daughters and a son.

Biggest Role Model

Judy Rollings is a founding member of Actors Theater of Phoenix. I learned a lot from her. She was my mentor and still is. She is my acting coach and has championed me through difficult times.

Guilty Pleasure

Chocolate in any form.

Favorite Pastime

Spending time with my husband. It’s a challenge to be married to someone like me with a career like mine. I’m gone nights and weekends, I work crazy hours. So when we have time together I love to get on our motorcycle with him and feel the wind in my face.

Favorite Movie

I can space out and let go by watching romantic comedies. “Love Actually” is a favorite. So is “50 First Dates.”

Travel Destination Wish List

I really want to go to Paris and Rome. I am a romantic and so is my husband. QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

Honoring Leaders in the First Prescott Athena Celebration

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The prestigious ATHENA Leadership Award is making its debut in the Quad Cities this month as the teams at Quad Cities Business News and Prescott Woman Magazine join forces to recognize the contributions, successes and character of the region’s amazing women.

Eight local leaders are being honored, women who have achieved professional success, provided valuable service to the community and actively assisted and supported others in their attainment of goals, excellence and leadership skills.

Finalists for the first Prescott Athena Award include: Prescott Area Leadership founding member Diane DeLong, Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Arizona Executive Director Nicole Kennedy, The Natural Healing Garden and Goods from the Garden co-owner Deborah Maranville, Lessons by Lexe Dance Studio owner Alexes Niekamp, Prescott City Councilmember Billie Orr, real estate agent Maria Rojas, CableONE/Sparklight Advertising Business Manager Monica Vohs and Northern Arizona Social owner Donna Werking.

The nominees have varied and fascinating backgrounds, including holding titles like Prescott Woman of the Year and Miss Yavapai County 2020. Collectively, they have earned a number of higher education degrees, including Hamburgerology! Some are Arizona natives while at least one of our Athena finalists grew up with little opportunity in another country. Another dedicated her career to public education. Some have built businesses and created jobs. Many have founded, co-founded and/or volunteered for non-profit organizations that improve the quality of life for others in the Quad Cities region. For a more comprehensive understanding of who these extraordinary woman are, visit prescottathena.com.

The following offers a glimpse into the lives of the first Prescott Athena nominees:

“I am fortunate to have had multiple mentors in my life, ranging from teachers to job supervisors. When I moved to Prescott in 1987, I sought out volunteer positions and quickly met some amazing people who took me under their wings,” said Diane DeLong. “It gives me great joy to do the same with the teens and young adults I supervise through my work at Catholic Charities. Mentoring others is how we can truly change the world.”

“I believe it is a privilege to work for a cause that creates opportunity and hope for the future,” said Nicole Kennedy, who founded the non-profit organization Prescott Women Who Care. “I am proud to work alongside a talented team of people who believe in the mission of lifting up young people in our community.”

“I am truly honored to have been nominated for the ATHENA Award, along with other great women in our community! My next dream is to offer culinary services to clients, families and caretakers with cancer and other autoimmune diseases and ensure that no child or person goes hungry,” said Deborah Maranville.

“The world is full of distractions on what a woman should be, instead of helping women find their voice and passion,” said Alexes Niekamp. “Each of us has a unique set of talents that should be encouraged, which is why it’s so important to invest in our young women. As more young women discover their path, we will build a strong culture of women reaching their full potential.”

“I have always welcomed the opportunity to mentor women and girls in leadership roles. My life was changed in 1963, when I was a sophomore in high school. My American History  teacher, Mrs. Ruby Brooks, was very vocal about how important it was for me to attend college,” said Billie Orr. “We all set examples of leadership for women of all ages.”

Maria Rojas is driven by her life experiences, including a difficult childhood in a small town in Mexico. Thus, she has a special place in her heart for first-time homebuyers. She enjoys guiding young adults through the process and discussing how they can achieve their goals, because as a child, she never thought home ownership was possible.

“In high school and college, I was a ‘Friends Helping Friends’ peer-leader and speaker, studying karate, and earning the Girl Scout Silver and Gold awards,” said Monica Vohs. “Those early years of involvement, although I didn’t know it then, shaped the person I choose to be today, focused on giving back and sharing what I have with others.”

“As an adult, I understand the sacrifices my mother made to become a U.S. citizen,” said Donna Werking. “She escaped a desolate farm town in rural Thailand and left her eight siblings behind at the young age of 21 to build a better future. It took plenty of guts and sacrifice. Today, I can only imagine the difficulty of this feat, the courage it must have taken… she is forever my hero.”

 

On Sunday, Sept. 19, one of these women will be honored as the first Prescott Athena. Joining QCBN and Prescott Woman Magazine in making the celebration possible are Hawk & Hound Catering and Events, The Barley Hound, Rosa’s Pizzeria, Back Alley Wine Bar, and Laserium MedSpa. QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN