Laurie Young Consulting

Legacy Farms

The Legacy Farms garden-to-table entrepreneurial program supports individuals with Asperger, Autism, ADHS, TBI and other neurodiversities. As Executive Director for Legacy Farms. I established the core program, set organizational strategy, and developed our apprentice hiring program while creating sustainable product lines to fund the organization and lessen grant dependency.

Our Growing Together Mentor / Apprenticeship model is based on training and hiring neurodiverse individuals to work in the garden and on non-profit organization projects. In designing Growing Together, I established a 7-step program sequence to meet individual and organizational objectives.

Our work is grounded in a relational model, focused on self-awareness and self-advocacy with an emphasis on mindful personal development. This involves preparing the environment and offerings so that personal growth emerges alongside instruction in employment skills.

Content Strategy & Partner Development

For seven years, I provided a balance of strategic business and program development that helped shape Charles' online offerings, with paticular emphasis on his online courses and related programs. I helped define and launch his initial course offering, and matured the product line by working with tech developers to ensure an integrated, scalable architecture with minimal launch and maintenance requirements so that the programming could be offered reliably "in the gift."

This allowed audience members who required it, to choose a price of "zero" or those who wanted to pay to do so at any level, with adjustments available at any time for any reason. In addition to understanding the technical requriements, I merged this product/business philosophy with strategic and tactical daily management needs to ensure sustainability for Charles' courses and organization as a whole.

During my time with him, working with Hoppel Designs, I oversaw major content restructuring and migration from multiple websites/user databases into an integrated system now serving 30,000+ members, while ensuring smooth product releases and upgrades within his customized platform.

I also developed relationships with outside course partners like Commune.com to integrate Charles' offerings, with the goal of growing our reach and delivery mechanisms for Charles' message. At present, each of Charles' proprietary courses serve apx. 2,000 audience members at launch with ongoing admissions daily. Charles' courses are vehicles to explore various dimensions of the transition in cultural narratives, generally run for 4-8 sessions and include extensive video/audio content as well as private discussion groups to deepen the conversation.

Altitude learning (AltSchool)

Altitude Learning (AltSchool) is a Silicon-Valley-based Ed Tech innovator. I collaborated with AltSchool leadership and an initial partner school in the early stages of defining core educational programs for platform integration. This included clarifying the partner school's philosophy and priorities, creating unit definition, initial workflow, and assessments. Based on this process, I assisted the partner school in designing and launching new programs using Character Lab principles.

Berthold Academy & Mindful Schools

Mindful Schools is an essential part of Berthold Academy's programming. I supported strategic visioning and design of Berthold's innovative Personal Development program, their "I AM" learning model, and six-phase meta-structure for PBLs based on "learning how to learn." We expanded experiential learning across disciplines for tightly integrated programming, and launched Mindful Schools' curriculum along with Character Lab's goal-setting as daily practices for increased self-awareness.

School Program Integration

Culinary & Food Studies

Website Structuring & Content

Culinary and Food Studies Integrated in Education

I customize culinary programs for schools, including sequenced cooking classes that sync with educational content ranging from sustainable eating and social/political food studies to mindful eating and the importance of community. Each program is an adaptation of my core program to suit the individual school's need, as shown here.

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Website Structuring & Content

I support clients in scalable structuring of content on their websites to inform parents, students and visitors about the school's mission and programs. We focus on content delivery, blogging and marketable presentation of the client's initiatives.

Mindfulness & Personal Health

Website Structuring & Content

Mindfulness & Personal Health

I sync mindfulness practices with healthy eating and personal development, based on the resources and interests of the school, to create a distinctive customized program that is manageable and enjoyable. The relationship of mindfulness, self-awareness, and self-organization to optimal learning is shown in this program.

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