Four decades ago, the idea of empowerment was fresh and daring. As young as the word itself, we, (David and Gail) both felt that empowerment would be at the heart of our life’s work. In our earliest days together, sitting with yellow legal pads at our kitchen table overlooking the Ashokan Reservoir and the Catskill Mountains, we planned our wedding ceremony and then seamlessly turned to designing our fledgling Empowerment Workshop. So intertwined was our love with our passion for this work, that ten days after we were married, we launched our first workshop. As we celebrate our fourth decade of marriage, our bond of love is stronger than ever and our passion for empowerment more compelling than ever.

All those years ago, neither we, nor the world, knew what empowerment really meant. We knew it was about helping people to grow and realize their full potential. We also knew that it was about more than just healing and fixing problems. But what exactly was its purpose? Why was this idea entering the lexicon of change strategies with such force? Over these four decades, an extraordinarily diverse, visionary, and committed community of people was attracted to our training programs to help us discover the answers to these questions.