Suzy SPIVEY

Suzy Spivey brings commitment, purpose, and an infectious enthusiasm to her coaching, speaking, and workshops. She is living one of her dreams through her TV show—Daring to Dream. Produced in Belmont, MA and aired on local cable, Daring to Dream offers inspiration, hope, and practical advice for living the life of your dreams.

With 20+ years of corporate experience in marketing, editorial, product and sales management, Suzy knows what it takes to succeed. She has worked with both large and small organizations to increase sales, build successful relationships, and increase visibility through innovative marketing.

Suzy worked her way through college in retail sales and graduated to a sales position in higher education publishing with D.C. Heath, driving college textbook sales from Alabama to California. Working in two diverse parts of the country required very different sales tactics, which led to an education in human relations and successful relationship building.

Her desire to have a greater impact led her to Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) in New York City where she quickly advanced from Marketing Manager to Acquisitions Editor. During this time, she was given a unique opportunity to develop and launch a new product line. This valuable experience provided an education in how to successfully enter a new market and establish a new product line. Through this experience, she developed skills in strategic planning, creating a vision, developing a brand, building visibility and recognition in an established market, recruiting authors, and championing a new product line to the sales force.

This success led to her advancement with a Boston-based publisher, Allyn & Bacon. Suzy was again gifted with a unique opportunity when an acquisition and merger required three companies’ product lines to be consolidated. Suzy took on the challenge with gusto and received a valuable education in managing a successful merger, leading to skills in long-range forecasting and budgeting, tough contract re-negotiations and terminations, managing and re-building author relationships, overseeing production schedules of three different companies, all while maintaining an enthusiastic outlook for the future. Most recently, Suzy served as Regional Manager for Thomson Learning, leading the northeast sales organization in producing sales in excess of $14 million.

Suzy’s experience in higher education publishing not only developed a diverse skill set in business and afforded an education in a multitude of discipline areas, but also provided an invaluable understanding of the learning process and how to create effective educational materials.

Working with internet start-ups, Suzy has created successful public relations campaigns, reworked business plans to attract funding, and implemented guerrilla marketing tactics to drive traffic to websites. As Director of Marketing for TripAdvisor.com, Suzy led the launch of this travel search engine in 2000, successfully building industry and press recognition, as well as consumer traffic. TripAdvisor.com is now the world’s largest travel information website.

Suzy received her coach training from Coaches Training Institute (CTI), one of the first educational institutions to develop and offer coach training. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, CTI is the largest in-person coach training school in the world. She is also a certified Dream Coach® and trained True Purpose Coach.  She holds a BSBA degree in Marketing from Auburn University.

Suzy is a life-long learner who continues to pursue her passion for knowledge and interest in the power of the mind. She has attended numerous workshops and trainings to further her education and expand the body of wisdom she has to pull from in serving her clients.

Following one of her passions in life, Suzy is now teaching a form of dance that she first experienced 12 years ago at the Kripalu Yoga Center in Lenox, MA. Suzy is a certified Dance Instructor of JourneyDance™, Shake Your Soul™, Kripalu Dancekinetics, Yoga TranceDance, and Zumba Dance. She finds immense joy in helping others tap into their own natural rhythm and find joy in movement. She studied with Daniel Leven, the Director of Leven Institute of Movement Therapy, co-founder of Kripalu DansKinetics^® and creator of Shake Your Soul^® and Body-Centered Expressive Therapy training, Toni Bergins, the creator of JourneyDance™, and Shiva Rea, the creator of Yoga TranceDance.

Suzy is a passionate adventure traveler and loves experiencing other cultures. She has traveled to many parts of the world and laid her head down to rest in some interesting places—under the stars high in the Himalayas and the peaks of Patagonia, a Buddhist monastery in Japan, an Ashram in the holy city of Rishikesh, India, a hut in a hillside tribe village in northern Thailand—and has had some amazing experiences—watching the sunrise over Macchu Picchu and set on the Taj Mahal, seeing the clouds lift from Mount Everest, floating over the Masai Mara in a hot-air balloon, taking a “holy” dip in the Ganges River, and completing an Elephant Training course in Thailand.  Most recently, Suzy spent a month in Bali, Indonesia exploring the culture and studying the Balinese practices of bringing balance and reverence for every living thing.

Board elected: Partial, exp. 2012