MARIA A. FRANCIS
CEO and Founder of Living Forward Alliance, Certified Effectiveness Coach (CEC)

Maria A. Francis is the CEO and Founder of Living Forward Alliance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to provide education, mentorship and social support to women with criminal justice histories who are incarcerated for drug related offenses and who have short-term pending release dates. Through a one-year program, Living Forward Alliance helps this population rethink their histories and rewrite their futures. The program makes real freedom achievable, and it triggers a positive and sustainable shift in beliefs and behaviors that makes it possible for women to obtain work, rebuild their families and reclaim their place in the community. Francis is a business coach, management consultant and entrepreneur with 30 years of experience in leading people and business management. As a business consultant, she assisted companies with their business development needs ranging from office reorganization to staff and management coaching. Prior to founding Living Forward Alliance, she successfully owned and managed multimillion dollars businesses in the restaurant industry and has assisted minority business owners in their business launch goals through business planning, accessing capital, budgeting and forecasting. Additionally, Francis was a cofounder and partner for 13 years with Entertainment One Inc., a multi-national and international food and beverage management company, which owned and operated 40 locations across the U.S. and Japan, including the management of the George Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport food courts. Her role included staff development and training, balancing a multi-million dollar budget, and system and procedure implementation. In 1994, Francis sold her stake in Entertainment One and launched Restaurant Reporting Plus, an accounting and consulting firm tailored to the restaurant industry. She successfully built and sold the business in 2005 to RSM-McGladrey-FPO a subsidiary of HR-Block a publicly held company interested in her technology and business trades. Francis is a Certified Effective Coach from Ideal Coaching Academy where she learned the Ontological method of coaching and now devotes her time as Executive Director of Living Forward Alliance. Educated in business administration, she is committed to contribute to individuals and organizations having a deep sense of purpose, meaning and responsibility. Francis has served as board member of Youth at Risk, a non-profit organization committed to transform the lives of youth trough a partnership with City of Houston Juvenile Detention Program. Currently, Francis serves on the board of the Houston Food Bank and its Audit Committee.

BETTIE SPRUILL
Certified Management Effectiveness Coach (CMEC)

Over the last 30 years, Bettie Spruill, has led more than 20,000 individuals around the world in experiential effectiveness seminars and workshops in the areas of leadership, purpose, vision and high performance. Inspired and inspiring, Bettie is a management consultant, entrepreneur, public speaker and writer who is a proven expert in training leaders in the techniques that unlock effective communications and sustained breakthroughs. She was Senior Vice President for Lifespring, Inc., one of the largest training and seminar companies in the world, is the co-founder of Vistar Integrated Programs and Ideal Coaching, and is the designer of some of the leading coaching academies in the United States and Malaysia. She is a certified Master NeuroLinguistic Programming practitioner and a leader in the field of ontological and ecological coaching. In April 2000, Bettie adopted Begoro, a village in Ghana, Africa, and began her mission to raise the money and provide the developmental tools to help that community develop sustainable practices of principled success.

JOYCE CHRISTIE
Senior International Facilitator, Certified Effectiveness Coach (CEC), Master NeuroLinguistic Programmer

Joyce Christie, owner of Peak Performance Services in San Rafael, California, boasts a multifaceted array of accomplishments and the amazing ability to connect with people of differing ages, cultures, backgrounds and beliefs to help them improve their lives. She is an international facilitator, consultant, writer and communication technology expert whose work is grounded on her commitment to personal and professional transformation. After studying business management at the University of Phoenix, Joyce was certified as a NeuroLinguistic Practitioner, and later as a Certified Effectiveness Coach. She was instrumental in the successful delivery of a project for the Mayor’s Office of Chicago Cineplex-Odeon Project, and has designed and delivered leadership development programs for a variety of organizations in Japan, Canada, Russia, Hong Kong, Argentina, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Samoa and Malaysia. For the past ten years she has worked with troubled teens and their parents to foster family unity through education, growth and change. She is a partner in the service project in Begoro, Africa, sharing her global expertise with this village as the citizens embrace positive transformation.