Elayna Bio

Letter From and About Eileen Broer
Founder and Executive Director of Elayna

Who I am and what has prepared me to help today's Indigo and Crystal Children/Adults and their parents, teachers, grandparents and other caregivers

I believe the Indigos’ and Crystals need a different kind of parenting, education and support to reach their potential.    I believe that the world will be a better place if and when everyone is supported in reaching their potential.   I want to do what I can to help.   I also want to help parents and teachers of these children and young adults to understand the critical role they can play in this, and to support them when they doubt themselves, wonder if anyone understands them, and don't know where to turn for help.   I want to support all of us in discovering our own magnificence.

I was very surprised when I began to get the intuitive idea (calling?) to start an organization to help Indigo and Crystal children and adults and their parents, teachers, grandparents and other caregivers.   After all, I thought, "What has prepared me to be able to do this?" After talking with others, expressing my doubts, and thinking hard about it, though, I realized that the answer to this question is, "Everything!"  

Everything I have done up to this point has prepared me to do this.   I was raised in a family of six children, so I have lots of experience being in a family and being a sibling, a big sister, a little sister, and a surrogate parent.   I am probably an Indigo myself, as I fit many of the characteristics, and I never felt that I really fit in perfectly in my family.   I definitely stood out.   My mother used to lovingly and exasperatingly refer to me as, "Oh, That One!"   I was the oldest girl in the family and the second born.   I was very responsible.   I was changing diapers when I was six years old.   At age eleven, I was earning money (a dollar a night back in the 1950's!) babysitting for other families.   I have always loved being around children.

I am a mother of a likely Indigo.   I understand how difficult it can be to find the right school and the right teachers, and to communicate with the teachers and school administrators.   I have seen my child struggle to learn in the ways that the schools say he should learn.   (He doesn't learn that way.)   I have seen him be labeled learning disabled , tested for ADHD and ADD (borderline, they said, but let's try to put him on medication anyway - we didn't, mostly due to my son's adamant refusal.)   I've seen him lose self-esteem and think that he is stupid instead of having superior intelligence -- as tested by the schools finally when he was a junior in high school .   I've stood by him when he was left back in fourth grade because the teacher said, rightly so, that he would not be able to do fifth grade math yet.   (He still can't pass Math classes, even in college.)   I asked my son when he was a few months into repeating fourth grade, "How is it going, Son?"   His response was, to me, astute and self-aware for a ten year old.   He said, "Mom, you could never understand how tough it is.   You lose so much respect when you are left behind."   Left behind indeed.

I've discovered in my studies, and in my own life raising my son, that if we raise these children who are being born in greater and greater numbers at this time, the way we were raised, we likely won't be providing these children what they need in order to reach their potential and fulfill their mission.   Instead, we might even make it harder for them.

What has prepared me to help parents and children to expand their possibilities and behaviors in ways that will support their own and each other's growth?   I've been helping people and organizations to grow for over thirty years.   I've been a successful executive (VP of three Fortune 500 corporations).   I've been a successful business owner for twenty years providing services to Fortune 100-1000 organizations in the form of organization development consulting, meeting design and facilitation, team development, management and leadership development, executive coaching and coach development.  

What have I learned during these years of coaching executives and teams, and helping organizations realize their potential that is directly transferable to helping parents and children?   Organizations and teams are like families and executives and employees are the parents and offspring of those families, as well as parents in their own homes.   I've also been the coaches' coach for over a hundred executive coaches for a major global coaching provider.   This has prepared me to help people coach well.   What is the difference between coaching and parenting?   Only the context; good parents are good coaches.

I think my experience co-facilitating many highly successful weeklong human interaction laboratories (Gestalt Groups) to assist organizational leaders to recognize and overcome debilitating behaviors and mind-sets (often unconscious and out of their awareness) will also be put to good use in this work.   These experiences have prepared me to deal with anything!   Most people said that the experience of attending one of these workshops was "life changing."   Many people found it so helpful that they also returned for a second and even a third workshop for graduates.   I'm comfortable facilitating life change at the group/family level, as well as the individual level.   I can build and hold a safe space for people to grow in, and that's my main role for Elayna.

My studies have also prepared me to work with families, parents and children, as well as executives and organizations.   I've studied for several years at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and also at the Gestalt International Study Center on Cape Cod.   I'm a graduate of the eighteen month Organization and Systems Development program, the one year intensive post-graduate program Working with Groups, the one year intensive post-graduate program, Working with Couples and Two-Person Systems, as well as the Coaching program and the program on helping people deal with mid-and-late-life career changes and other life changes.

I'm also a pioneer and risk taker, as are these parents and the Indigos’ and Crystals.   I was the first woman vice president of two Fortune 500 companies.   I started my own consulting company in 1985, when women were just beginning to start their own businesses in large numbers.   (I was president of a chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners then, and I recall our board putting on a ground-breaking conference to help women entrepreneurs.)     I also moved to China for over four years in the late nineties and started a joint venture with a Chinese company to teach Western management and leadership to senior managers of Chinese State Owned Enterprises, which were at that time going through enormous change organizationally and personally.   And I don't speak Chinese!

My experience and work using the Myers-Briggs® Personality Type indicator (MBTI®) has also given me a solid foundational tool to help parents and children.   My article comparing Chinese personality type with Western personality type (Journal of Psychological Type, 1999) was named Best Application of Psychological Type that year.   Parents benefit from understanding their own personality type so they can better understand their natural parenting style and how it impacts others.   When children learn their own personality type, they are better able to understand themselves, their peers and their teachers.

I've also been recognized with awards for my leadership, and I'm sure to find those skills useful in leading Elayna to fulfill its mission.    I've been recognized since the 1980's in Who's Who of International Women, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in Finance in Industry, and many other similar publications.

I think the most important experience that has prepared me to fulfill this role as executive director of Elayna is my experience as a Professional Sharing Facilitator.   This is the crux of my job.   One of my roles is to do research and bring information on the phenomenon of the great influx of Indigos’ and Crystals over the last twenty years and now.   But my main role is to facilitate sharing of this information and the information and experience that resides in the minds and hearts of Indigos, Crystals and their parents, teachers and other caregivers.   I'm sure I will be facilitating sharing through more vehicles than the Elayna website and Discussion Board.

I'm also a writer and this skill is already being used in the service of Elayna.   I taught business writing at New York University.   Many of my articles have been published in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.   My monthly management development column, The Human Dimension, was published for a year in the city magazine of Guangzhou, China.   My workbook, Essential Skills and Concepts for Working Together Collaboratively, is used to develop high-performance teams in organizations.   My audio CD's, The Power of Unfinished Business;   Nine Leadership Secrets; and Leading from Wholeness and Emotional Strength, have been used to help people recognize and complete unfinished business, resolve conflict, develop their leadership competencies, and become comfortable with their own and others' emotions.  These concepts and techniques are very useful in parenting too.    I'm sure I will be putting these writing and speaking skills to good use to meet Elayna's mission.  

Please do not hesitate to contact me with your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, referrals to others who may help in this endeavor and to site links, books, book reviews and referrals, conferences, etc., etc. so that I can share them with our Elayna community.

I am most grateful for your participation and support in this grand endeavor.  

Yours truly,