Monday, December 31, 2007

Where Are They Now? Dr. Stephanie Parson


One of the great friends of BDPA over the years is Dr. Stephanie Parson. She was a charter member of the BDPA Rocky Mountain chapter when it was founded in April 1989. It is also worth noting that today is Stephanie's birthday!

I met Stephanie when she was an executive at Walt Disney World. She was a key player in the successful 2002 national BDPA conference held in Orlando. Stephanie helped us land Roger Berry, WDW Chief Information Officer as the keynote speaker for the Awards Gala that year.

Stephanie served in national leadership positions with BDPA from 2002 through 2005 as both one of our Outside Directors and as VP-Strategy & Planning. Her place in the BDPA Hall of Fame is based on the intense passion that she brings to vision and strategic planning for our organization. She taught us how to create a shared 3-year stategic direction and base on current year budgets on a detailed 1-year business plan. We still use that methodology in our strategic planning today.

On a professional level, she left WDW and started her own company ... Crowned Grace. She is very active with an organization of chief executive officers known as CEO Space. In fact, her involvement in CEO Space resulted in recent opportunity for her to become part of an investment opportunity in Costa Rica. Here is what she had to say about her visit to South America:
"Wow!
  • 4 hour drive from the airport to our cabins!
  • 1 hour drive each day to the plantations
  • 3 hour walk on 1 plantation (only able to see ~1/4th of this plantation)
  • 3 hour horseback ride on another plantation (able to see ~1/8th of this plantation) My horse knew that it had been years since I had been on a horse
  • 2 hours down (and up again) 500 steps to get to the waterfall
  • 2 hour hike in the rain forest (rained for about 1.5 hours --- HEAVY RAIN!)
  • Saw an active volcano Saw monkey's, creatures with long tails, beautiful birds, dogs, flowers and so much more Met wonderful people!
  • Created LONG TERM Strategic Alliances
  • Wet...Covered in Mud...Covered with Ant Bites...Broken fingernails...Broken toenails...don't even get me started on my hair :->
  • WOULDN'T TRADE THE EXPERIENCE FOR THE WORLD!!!
Who knew that wood was a profitable venture??? Who knew that replanting the rain forest would be such a profitable experience???"
You can see Stephanie and her partners in this 4-minute video from Costa Rica. Hmmm, I need to get that sista a BDPA Foundation T-Shirt that she can be wearing for her next YouTube video (smile).




Do any of our BETF-Blog Readers remember working with Stephanie? Care to share your rememberances with us?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello Everyone! It continues to be a great journey and I'm having so much fun! Give me a call or better yet, send me an email! Stephanie Parson (321.251.5236) or saparson@crownedgrace.com