The Courage Expert™

Sandra Ford Walston is the principal of a 13-year-old learning and leadership consulting firm based in Denver. Known as The Courage Expert™, she is a national speaker, corporate trainer, poet, and internationally published author. With an emphasis on understanding courage behaviors and individual personality and leadership styles, the consultant/author specializes in organizational behavior that guides people to step up to their next level (“He who hesitates before each step spends his life on one leg.” – Chinese proverb). She provides skill-based programs for public and private businesses, including Caterpillar, Inc., Procter & Gamble, the FBI, Hitachi Consulting, IBM, Wide Open West and Farmers Insurance. She is an ad hoc faculty member for The Woodhull Institute and the Advanced Management Institute. She taught for eleven years programs for the Colorado Society of CPAs and she was a former instructor at the University of Denver. She is currently a candidate for an Honorary Doctorate Degree.

Prior to starting her private business consulting practice in 1993, Sandra Ford Walston served for seven years as Vice President, Private Banking in California, where she developed over 35 million dollars in aggregate deposits. Her success as a banker was enhanced by her previous accomplishments in real estate, selling residential and income properties. She earned sales volume awards for six consecutive years.

Sandra Ford Walston is the internationally published author (Greece and Brazil) of the regional bestseller COURAGE: The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman/Reclaiming the Forgotten Virtue endorsed by Marianne Williamson, Jack Canfield, Harriet Rubin and Neale Donald Walsch, to name a few. Prior to contracting with Random House, she started her own publishing company and was the 2000 Colorado Independent Publishers Association winner. Her second book, COURAGE GOES TO WORKS (courage consciousness skills at work), extends the original research and highlights the male and female insights on the merit of courage leadership at work. Walston writes for Chief Learning Officer and she has written for many other magazines including Training & Development and Strategic Finance. She has presented for major associations and Fortune 500 companies.

Sandra Ford Walston earned her B. A. in Social Science from San Jose State University and she holds a Lifetime Teaching Credential in California. She is certified in the Enneagram, a system of understanding nine different personality types within three general categories and she has advanced qualifications to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® to access challenges in team building, leadership preferences, communication and time management. She believes that integrating spirituality and work leads to a more naturally propelled and happy employee, resulting in reduced attrition and improved bottom-line performance.

Sandra says of her work and life, “I am fascinated with the dynamics of the human condition; therefore, my desire is to contribute my passion in a way that enhances each individual’s personal and professional gifts. One way I seek to accomplish this is to awaken people to the original definition of the word courage, meaning ‘heart and spirit.’ As a practicing contemplative, I hold myself 100% accountable for each precious day. I feel blessed to be able to have a career that expresses my calling.”

“Courage is the gift that lifts your spirit.”

KEYNOTE SPEECH
“Courage: The Untapped Reservoir” is a non-gender keynote based on more than five years of original and groundbreaking research that extracted the twelve behaviors of courage. Sandra’s insightful and informative keynote is also available as a 2-4 hour transformational workshop. Broadway Books (a division of Random House) foresaw Sandra’s study as a new perspective when they proudly published COURAGE: The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman/Reclaiming the Forgotten Virtue.

Sandra leads women and men to:
 Claim and apply the behaviors of courage
 Shorten the learning curve
 Succeed amidst uncertainty
 Distinguish the importance of defining moments
 Bring personal passion to life
 Step up to the next level

COURAGE LEADERSHIP IN THE WORKPLACE WILL:
 Promote an ability to think on your feet
 Encourage challenging the model/system
 Endorse your "courage change agents"
 Chart the correlation between your success and courage quotients
 Tackle issues as the facts happen
 Incite team dynamics to "step up" to the next level

COURAGE SEMINARS:
 With Courage, Your Passion Cannot Be Doused
 Women Working with Courage: How to Claim, Apply and Rely on It
 Courage Leadership: Stepping Up to Your Next Level

COMMUNICATION SEMINARS:
 Hello Saturn, Hello Neptune: Communicating with People from
Another Planet (partner program)
 E-Mail/Voice Mail: Human Connections in Virtual Space

LEADERSHIP TOOLS:
 Human Engineering: Implementing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®
to Maximize Individual Talents (partner program)
 Enneagram: A Model for 9 Ways of Living and Working (partner program)

What people Are Saying

"Sandra has a keen insight about how to provide practical and applicable
skills, and how to hold people accountable for the results.
—Theresa Hart-Kanan, Past President - CO Women in Cable & Telecommunications

"I have been in the Health Care industry for 27 years and I have attended numerous conferences. Sandra’s keynote at our annual convention was the best presentation I have seen and experienced. Her topic, ‘Courage: The Untapped Reservoir,’ was not only engaging, but she captivated everyone’s attention. Her stories of everyday people painted pictures about how our courage is waiting to be awakened, and her concrete examples guided us to cultivate our own reservoirs of courage. Thank you, Sandra, for providing us with hope and for rekindling our energy to continue doing what we do best."
—Jill Elliott, RN, BSN,MBA - Health & Community Services Director

"Our lively summer conference group certainly got into the ‘Hello Saturn, Hello Neptune’ program. Participants loved the interaction.We will have you back to present some of your other topics. Thank you so much for the energy and enthusiasm you gave to the program."
—Sondra S. Donnel - Executive Director, American Consulting Engineers of CO

Endorsements for COURAGE

Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God and others, said: "COURAGE is one of the greatest gifts from God. It is a gift that changes people’s lives and uplifts the experience of the entire planet. In this extraordinary book by Sandra Ford Walston, clarity and wisdom are mixed with deep insight to produce a document of stunning value.
I hope women—and men—everywhere read it".

Jack Canfield, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul, and many more, said: "Sandra Ford Walston’s book celebrates the brilliance of contemporary women whose lives were transformed by embracing the virtue of courage. Her profound research indicates that every woman has been endowed with this virtue and shows us how to evoke it and manifest it more fully in our own lives".