With over three decades of experience weaving the arts into transformational experiences, I now serve as a Creative Wellbeing Consultant working at the intersection of the expressive arts, applied positive psychology, neuroscience, and educational best practices.

I served as the first Program Coordinator for Arts in Medicine at Shands Hospital/University of Florida in the 1990s, which sparked a lifelong devotion in me for arts and wellbeing.

I spent over 20 years of my academic career at the University of Central Florida as a Professor of Theatre. There, I co-created one of the nation’s only MFAs in Theatre for Young Audiences, developed beloved interdisciplinary honors courses such as Thrive, Creative Processes, and Theatre for Social Change, and created innovative, award-winning arts and wellbeing projects and programming.

My work as an applied arts practitioner has taken me around the world (from teaching for Semester at Sea to living off the grid in developing countries), always centering creativity and the arts as a vehicle for healing, connection, and positive social change. I’ve worked with first responders, trauma survivors, hospitals, the LGBTQ+ community, children facing life-shortening illnesses, elders, people with aphasia, law enforcement, places of worship, summer camps, universities, the hearing impaired, college students, and many more.

At the heart of my work is a simple belief -  within each of us lives a well of creative wisdom, an inner medicine and light capable of guiding us toward healing, connection, and human flourishing.

I help people flourish through creative expression, awakening resilience, creativity, connection, and the wisdom within.

I also…

🌀Train facilitators (certification offered)

🌀Offer playshops (TBA)

🌀Create and offer curricula and expressive arts sessions

🌀Integrate positive psychology. (The study of human flourishing)

🌀Provide consultation to individuals, groups, and organizations wishing to offer and/or integrate Creative Wellbeing

🌀Offer keynotes and conference presentations

✧Women Making History

✧Excellence in Undergraduate Education

✧Outstanding Professor of the Year

✧Excellence in Academic Partnerships

✧Pabst-Steinmetz Innovation in Arts & Wellness

A Field Guide for Facilitators

Creative Wellbeing is a practical and inspiring field guide for facilitators, educators, coaches, and helpers who want to use the expressive arts to support human flourishing.

Rooted in expressive arts practice and informed by positive psychology and neuroscience, this guide offers a clear and compassionate pathway for guiding people as they reconnect with creativity, meaning, and their innate capacity for wellbeing.

Rather than teaching people about wellbeing, Creative Wellbeing invites them to experience it directly through simple, powerful creative practices.

Through drawing, movement, story sharing, reflection, and symbolic expression, participants rediscover the wisdom within themselves and the healing power of imagination, connection, and play.

What the Field Guide Offers

Creative Wellbeing is a philosophy, a practice, and a toolkit.

Inside you will find:

• Step-by-step expressive arts playshops you can bring to groups or individuals.

• Facilitation guidance and demonstration rooted in person-centered and expressive arts principles.

• Activities aligned with the PERMA+ model of wellbeing.

• Neuroscience insights explaining why creative expression and applied positive psychology support healing and growth.

• Reflective practices that deepen meaning, resilience, and self-understanding.

• Real stories from participants whose lives were transformed through the work.

•Guided visualizations and meditations.

The guide helps facilitators create spaces where people feel safe, curious, creative, and connected.

Who It’s For

Creative Wellbeing is designed for people who hold space for others, including:

• Educators and teaching artists
• Counselors and therapists
• Coaches and group facilitators
• Wellness practitioners
• Faith and retreat leaders, and community builders
• Anyone who believes creativity is essential to human wellbeing

You do not need to be an artist to use this work. You only need curiosity, presence, and a willingness to explore.

Creative Wellbeing the field guide is included in the training but may be purchased separately. Launch TBA.

Creative Wellbeing: An Expressive Arts Journey into the Heart of Human Flourishing

Live Online | Synchronous | Cohort-Based Training

Blending the expressive arts and positive psychology, Creative Wellbeing offers an evidence-based yet deeply human pathway into flourishing - one that is both facilitator-ready and profoundly personal.

Grounded in Positive Psychology’s “pillars of happiness and wellbeing” (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and beyond), each playshop invites us to draw, move, write, and reflect – strengthening resilience, reducing anxiety, sparking creativity, and deepening agency and authentic connection.

You won’t simply learn about the work - you will enter it, experiencing the playshops from within then exploring the architecture beneath.

Training Dates TBA. For more detailed information click on the “Facilitator Training” tab.