A Wild Ride: Our Blog

Elizabeth Coplan’s professional life includes over 20 years of corporate writing.  A degree in English Literature from the University of Texas prepared her for a brief stint teaching writing.  Later she worked with the offices of prime ministers, presidents, numerous chief executives, international companies, labor organizations, and institutions of higher learning and religion as managing editor of Chief Executive Magazine in New York. 

However, life at the top of Fifth Avenue’s Olympic Tower meant long hours and no social life outside of work.  Elizabeth followed her dreams of Hollywood screenwriting fame to Beverly Hills.  She wrote technical manuals for a Fortune 500 company by day, worked on her screenplay, attended UCLA writing classes at night, and worked with famed literary agent Florence Fieler, on a historical romance novel.

Next, as marketing manager for Collins Food International, Elizabeth prepared presentations for the Board of Directors, stockholders, financial analysts, and employees.  As a company spokesperson, she dealt with every PR expert’s nightmare, 60 Minutes, when the television show investigated the death of another restaurant’s customer due to an overdose of sodium bisulfate, a common ingredient in salad bars. 

After moving to the Pacific Northwest, Elizabeth became Director of Communications with Touche Ross (now Deloitte).  A pioneer in the field of professional services marketing, Elizabeth promoted accounting, tax, and consulting services.  She established Touche as the premier business consultants to the Seattle Times, the Puget Sound Business Journal, and the Daily Journal of Commerce. 

While at Touche, Elizabeth met and married her soul mate.  She left the firm to join Davis Wright, a little known local law firm.  Her marketing and public relations strategies brought the Northwest law firm into the national limelight as the firm grew from 150 attorneys and 5 offices to 300 attorneys and 10 offices in less than five years.  Her groundbreaking techniques of community service promoted the firm through sponsorship of public television and radio, an unheard of approach for marketing professional services at the time.  She worked with the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times and developed television and radio marketing opportunities for the firm.

But Elizabeth’s greatest accomplishment during these years was the birth of her first child.  Once he became too old to travel with her on business trips, Elizabeth began working part-time.  After three years of balancing work and mothering, she decided that being a mom was the greatest job she could ever have. 

In 1995, her second son was born.  She looked forward to “Mommy-and-Me” swim classes, story time at the library and happy family adventures.  But this son’s anxieties and reaction to stimulation prevented any outside activities, and the once social mother stayed at home in the false hope of providing comfort to her intense child. 

It is this experience, as a mother of a challenging child, that truly draws Elizabeth to this project.  Going from the hierarchical world on which our society is based to the communal and often-discounted world of nurturing, Elizabeth found that being a mother has been her toughest and most rewarding job. 

Though valuable, long nights of working on promotion and marketing strategies are not what make Elizabeth an authority to write this book.  It’s the long nights of walking an inconsolable baby and days of trying to coax a depressed child to smile.  It’s the many trips to the pediatrician, therapist, psychiatrist, and neurologist.  It’s meeting with teachers and nights spent devouring parenting books.  It’s trips to the herbalist, homeopathic doctor and acupuncturist, looking for help.  And, it’s Elizabeth’s participation in the mothers’ group she writes about that gives her the strength and the resources to carry on, knowing that she is not alone dealing with a challenging child.

More about Mary

Mary Scribner, a registered nurse and Certified Parent Coach, has a passion for motivating and inspiring people.  She supports struggling parents with a heart-centered approach combined with professional expertise.  Her career as a maternal-child health expert evolved after years of third world travel and recognizing family health disparities in her own backyard.  Working with those most in need, Mary designed and implemented health care programs for families in crisis and with special needs. 

Only after having her own challenging child did Mary truly understand how parents feel the need for support and understanding.  As a parent coach, she helps parents feel empowered, develop and use new skills, entertain fresh perspectives, and make changes, all with encouragement and support.  As a result, parents have renewed confidence, experience less chaos as a family, and enjoy one another more.  Whether engaged in a one-on-one coaching relationship, support group facilitation, or as a community partner, Mary plays a significant role in helping families shape a hopeful future.

These accomplishments have helped Mary develop a keen understanding of the difficulties many parents face.  Navigating within the “popular culture” to help their children succeed is no easy task.  This is particularly true in a cultural atmosphere that tends to undermine parents’ values and trivializes their authority and competence.  In her role as a support group facilitator, Mary utilizes techniques from different cultures and traditions—like the ancient tradition of Native American council sharing—along with the new science of Appreciative Inquiry.  Using her intelligent approach to community partnerships, Mary developed and implemented a university-affiliated mentoring program for graduate level students earning certification as parent coaches.  Certified coaches leave the program capable of addressing the unique needs of families worldwide. 

Mary also works with health departments and social service agencies, helping them organize meaningful conversations and inspire local community action.  The anticipated result is policy change and life-affirming family support.  In that role, Mary facilitates large groups of CEOs, state politicians, and agency directors in an innovative process known as World Café and Open Space Technology.  These radical new practices help bring together public and private organizations working collaboratively to create unique models of health care delivery and community health standards.  Area hospitals, in their efforts to support the families in their care, hope to achieve the success of the innovative model Mary helped develop.  All of this work raises the bar for family health. 

Through actively building these networks of professional partnerships, Mary creates parenting communities in both rural and urban settings that generate valuable parenting resources.

Mary’s work is often featured in both local and national publications.  Examples include “With Mayhem at Home, They Call a Parent Coach,” published in The New York Times, March 13, 2005; “Even Parents Can Use a Little Coaching,” The Bainbridge Island Review, January 12, 2005; “Help is Just a Phone Call Away,” The Bremerton Sun, January 23, 2005; and “Parent Counselors a Ring Away,” The Bainbridge Islander, February 5, 2005.  Her article, “Parent Coaches Offer Help for the Journey through Childhood,” appeared in the October 2004 issue of Seattle’s Child, Puget Sound’s premiere parenting journal.  You can find Mary’s articles and work at www.soundparentcoaching.com.  She has recently been asked to serve as an advisory board member for a creative cable television program on parenting.

Mary lives with gratitude on a peaceful island in Puget Sound, paddling her kayak between frequent rain showers and precious sun breaks.