Personal History

As a shy middle kid growing up in a large, intense family in Albuquerque New Mexico, I knew myself as a champion reader, a decent cellist with practicing problems, a pretty good writer, and a thespian.  I loved rearranging my room, organizing my shell collection, and odd little craft projects like dolls with pantyhose faces or elaborate collages taped to the back of my bedroom door.

Career Dreams

When I went off to college I jettisoned the cello and the shell collection and started mentally testing out an array of career dreams including actress, documentary filmmaker, lawyer, teacher, and writer.  But, by the time I graduated, I realized that most of these options would require a degree of risk that I found terrifying and a level of entrepreneurial gumption that I did not possess.  So, I crossed everything off the list except teacher and writer and headed off to graduate school to figure out the rest.

The Dark Decade

On paper, it made perfect sense.  The only problem was, I hated it. 

At first, the student life was comfortably familiar, but after year two I was lightly miserable, and by year eight I had agonized myself into a breakdown.  My growing certainty that I was NOT meant for an academic life was almost perfectly balanced by my fear and confusion about what else I could possibly do, so I just hovered in a purgatory of indecision, self-sabotage, and depression. 

When my inner state finally became too grim to bear, I took a year’s leave to heal a bit and sort myself out. In that time, it dawned on me that at least a part of my mistake had been to quit doing all the creative things I’d done since childhood – the music, the theater, the creative writing, the making of lumpy dolls and magazine collages.  I had always assumed that these endeavors were “on the side,” the kinds of things that make you a well-rounded kid, but no one expects you to keep doing as a serious adult. 

The Breakthrough

Now I started exploring the possibility that I’d been wrong. What if creativity was not a side dish for me?  What if it were my entrée?  What if I allowed myself to contemplate a life animated by joy and pleasure instead of responsibility and respectability and security? What would that even look like given the number of different ways my creativity expressed itself?

These insights and inklings set the stage for what has become a 20-year immersion in the study and practice of creativity and the creator's journey. 

Three Big Questions

Since then, I’ve made my living in a bunch of different ways, but I never stopped reading and thinking about three Big Questions:

1. What is the connection between creativity and purpose? 

2. How do creators persevere in making self-generative work in conditions of uncertainty, fear, and doubt?

3. What do creators know about how to compose a life shaped around inner needs and knowings rather than external rules or expectations?  

Persevering Gently

The Creative Constellation framework at the heart of The Saltee Academy represents my slow and gradual synthesis of what I learned in those decades. I have nudged this work along on weekends and evenings while raising a daughter, sustaining an art practice and supporting my family with a potpourri of work as a curriculum designer, organization development consultant, freelance writer and editor, workshop facilitator and creativity coach. 

By 2015, I was finally ready to publish the first iteration of the Creative Constellation Card Deck and began testing the Creative Constellation framework on real live humans in talks, webinars, and workshops.  The feedback from these early groups helped me refine my ideas and tools, ultimately leading to the versions you’ll find in the Academy today. 

Nowadays, my daughter is off to college (give or take a pandemic) and I live on a beautiful island in the Pacific Northwest with my husband, quite near my still-close, still-intense large family.  I spend most mornings in my office and most afternoons in my art studio, and my love affair with carbohydrates remains pure and true.

Professional History

Director of Leadership and Learning Programs for Riane Eisler's Center for Partnership Studies. Sara designs and facilitates online programs for a global audience based on the work of internationally best-selling feminist author Riane Eisler.

Assemblage artist. Sara makes harmonious little worlds in shrines and shadow boxes. She shows her work at the Rob Schouten Gallery and at Sara’s Art Site.

Freelance editor and content designer. Sara helped consultants, coaches, speakers, and other professionals create dynamic information products and training programs that effectively communicate their expertise to target audiences.

Organization development and strategic planning consultant. Sara specialized in qualitative data gathering and analysis, community-based planning processes, and adult learning design for public agencies and not-for-profit organizations.

Adjunct Faculty in Communication and English at Regis University and Front Range Community College in Colorado.

Faculty Advisor at Regis University and Front Range Community College.

Writing Instructor at UC San Diego's Muir College Writing Program.

Education

Certified Creativity Coach, 2003, Eric Maisel Training Program (now run through the Creativity Coaching Association)

Doctoral Candidate in Communication, 1996 University of California, San Diego

M.A. in Communication, 1993 University of California, San Diego

Bachelor of Arts in Sociology & Anthropology, 1990 Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA