My primary work is with the Ethics of Choice Training Program, sharing it with individuals, hoping they will find value in it, helping them implement it in their organizations. To date (11/2001), nearly three thousand individuals have been through the training. These individuals have been from all areas of community life and work--profit, non-profit, government, education--and this experience has served only to convince me of the relevance and value of this program. Several organizations have implemented the Ethics of Choice Training Program with their entire workforce and for those interested in implementing the program in their organization, I am happy to provide references.

I received my Ph.D. in 1978 from Union Graduate School (working principally in the Human Development Department at the University of Kansas - see Acknowledgements). I consider myself a student of human and organizational development and I have tried over the course of my career to create programs and experiences that foster such development. For the past fifteen years, I have focused on creativity, human potential and ethics.

The Ethics of Choice Training Program was born out of my belief that the workplace is a theater of sorts wherein character can be evolved and perhaps something outstanding accomplished. The ethics of choice, in my view, are the means for doing both.

If I can be of service to your organization or if you would like to learn more about the Ethics of Choice Training Program, then please don't hesitate to contact me. For those interested in the specifics of my work history, an extended bio follows.

Extended Bio: Work History plus Specific Projects

For two years beginning in 1971, I worked at the University of Colorado Medical Center for Thomas Budzynski and Johann Stoyva, two pioneers in the field of Biofeedback. It was in their laboratory that some of the early and now classic work with biofeedback and stress-related disease was done; in particular, the work with tension headache (frontalis feedback) and sleep-onset insomnia (theta feedback). Profound Relaxation & the Heroic Strategy grew out of my experience in that laboratory.

Shortly before my dissertation orals (9/78), I discovered I was unable to identify my area of study. (I did my graduate work in the Human Development Department at the University of Kansas under the auspices of Union Graduate School.) Not until the Saturday night prior to my Thursday evening orals did I realized that for five years I had been studying "the circus".

The Way of the Circus (page under construction.) was a slide show shown to my dissertation committee as a way of capsulizing my area of study. It is now a small book in search of a publisher.

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In 1981, I published the Catalyst (page under construction). Consisting of both original work and quotes from a wide variety of sources, this book offered poetic and/or philosophical perspectives on life. It was an attempt to activate the "poetic mind" (see "The Five Levels of Being").

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From 1979 to 1988, I worked in a large institution for delinquent and neglected youth. While there, in addition to my duties as director of one of the institution's divisions, I pursued my interest in organizational development.

"Workplace Theater" and the "Memo Game" (page under construction) were two projects intended to promote awareness, understanding and creativity in the workplace.

During this time I wrote "High Performance: A Hedgehog's View of the Problem", keynote address at the 29th Annual Workshop for Personnel Who Work in Homes for Children, Fort Worth, Texas, June 22, 1987.

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In 1984, I developed a schematic detailing the stages of human development. Of my formulation, Dr. M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, wrote: "I wanted to let you know how much I agree with the essential dynamics of your schema; you are indeed representing reality rather accurately."

All of my work since the development of this schema has been anchored to the "Five Levels" formulation (though my sense of what is meant by the various levels has deepened considerably). Clicking on "The Five Levels of Being" will take you to the Game of Life Website where this schema is presented along with other projects (i.e., The Dance of the Seven Veils, Historification Therapy, the essay entitled, "From No Mind to Never Mind: Steps Toward Human Completion").

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From mid-July to late-August of 1986, the University of Nebraska at Omaha Art Gallery hosted a gallery installation that I had created. Consisting of twenty-one exhibits, it was a "found" installation, "re-installed," with the visitor invited to view the installation from a vantage point well in the future.

The tour of the installation began with the "Five Levels" and closed with the "Way of the Circus". All intervening exhibits were profiles of individuals who had provided evidence--in their personal or professional lives--of the "poetic mind" at work.

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In 1988, I devoted myself full-time to my work as a writer-trainer-consultant. In over forty cities I made presentations to various organizations on imagination, creativity, the stages of human development (page under construction). This was a great pleasure (and privilege) as I was sharing not only my work but the work of a number of wonderful artists who supported my effort. In the end, however, this proved an insufficient means of support and so, in 1993, at the suggestion of a friend, I turned my attention to the development of the Ethics of Choice Training Program.

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The Ethics of Choice Training Program is being implemented currently in a number of organizations in both the United States and Canada. My attempt with this training program has been to build a code of ethics that is "worldcentric" (as opposed to ego- or ethnocentric) in nature and as such, a training program that promotes human development, organizational development, personal responsibility, innovation . . .

Clicking on "the Ethics of Choice" will take you to the Ethics of Choice Home Page.

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The Ethics of Choice work was just beginning when I took a job with the City of Omaha Planning Department (1994). My role has been to help the City of Omaha conceptualize and implement a three county "Continuum of Care for the Homeless". This has been rewarding work for which the City (in 1998) received the Department of Housing and Urban Development's John J. Gunther Award--"a Blue Ribbon Best Practices Award in Housing and Community Development". Recently (2001), this work again was acknowledged, this time by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as a semifinalist for their "Innovations in American Government" Award.

The approach taken in this work is detailed in the following essay: "Community Development & the Health of Our Culture"