Joanne Dennison, The Guidance Counselor for Grown-Ups

The child of a right brain highly creative (“What can we make out of that paper towel tube?”) mother and a left brain engineer father (who sent letters with diagrams in them), I like to think I got the best of both of them in me, with “me” filling in the holes and bridging the gaps. I could go on and on with tales of being brought up constantly involved in some kind of craft project, during the same years of watching engineering movies every night after dinner at one point. I could explain wind shear before I had ever flown in a plane. This did raise me to be very comfortable in both worlds. Both were highly curious which I think is why everything interests me.

Mom was the kind that could look around and pull ideas out of thin air. Dad was very methodical in his thinking. This has given me the ability to see “the other” POV (Point of View), connect dots that others frequently cannot even see, and other times think in a flowchart (no really—I realized one day I was doing that.)