Professional Development
I received both my Bachelor of Science Degree (2000) and Masters of Science Degree (2003) from Western Illinois University.  Started out teaching aerobics at the campus recreation center and that turned into a passion to help others feel healthy and happy.  I became a certified fitness specialist and personal trainer through the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and also through the National Academy of Sports medicine (NASM).

My inspiration for caring about others health and happiness came from my Mother who is currently a hospice nurse.  At a young age I always knew I wanted to help people prevent illness as appose to treating illness when it’s almost too late.  My family has a history of cardiovascular disease and studying ways to prevent heart disease gave me a drive to finish school successfully.  I guess you can say that I decided to pursue this career because I was driven by a compelling force related to my family’s health.  

All of my degrees have helped shape my career today.  Most recently I became a Corporate Athlete Course Facilitator and have found great insight to studying energy management over the last two years.  This course and research from the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida has really help improve my focus around nutrition and when and why we eat for increased improvement.  Over the last two years I’ve been sharing this knowledge with our company employees and helping them regain their motivation and focus (especially after work hours) so that they too will have more energy for what truly matters in life,  their family and friends.  

Demonstrated Success

The major health promoting contributions that I have made so far at my current company is creating health awareness through action and movement.  I’ve been promoting three simple concepts over the last two years that have really started creating sustainable health awareness for our HUBs and they are: 1) Eating nutritious and eating small meals often, 2) Moving more through active breaks, 3) restore through sleep and positive self talk.  Although measuring success has been a challenge with such a decentralized company, we have had small successes and understand that behavior change in a company will take time, years and consistency at the management level.  My greatest individual success was helping a coworker who was 99% wheelchair bound when I started at HUB International.  Over time, she decreased her weight by 280 lbs. and threw away her wheelchair!   Her story was featured on CNN Report and recently posted on Huffington Post, see links to read more about Brenda Jones wellness success story.  

• http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1169712,
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/03/i-lost-weight-brenda-jones_n_5916760.html?1415021044. 

Looking at aggregated wellness success, I’ve seen an increase in employees taking part in wellness services and biometric screenings and we have significant data showing that triglyceride levels have improved in all locations that I’ve been work with at HUB.  Next year, I’m hoping to begin seeing significant improvements in BMI, Weight and body Fat.   We have two hears of screening data and next year I hope to begin seeing healthier trends across the 12 HUB locations that I’m tracking in our employee only cohort (year after year) to really understand what’s happening with our population and if the wellness movement is creating lasting positive change. 
 
My process to begin creating wellness improvements within HUB International has really been at a grass roots level.  I travel 50% of the time to our HUB International locations that I feel can create the most significant change. But first, I started with the support of my boss, VP of Benefits and Compensation and together, we captured the support of the EMT and we were granted approval to meet with local leaders at our twelve most unhealthy or dis-engaged HUB locations across the USA.  

My process the first year has been the following:

1. Meet with local leaders and get approval to hold all employees meeting to gather ideas and suggestions from local employees on wellness.   
2. Form wellness committees that meet monthly at their location
3. Meet with wellness committees and begin planning education and events/activity for the year
4. Launch  HUB Healthy Habits Monthly Education over the next 7 months for employees
5. Launch HUB Healthy Habits Movement and Activity 
6. Review wellness policies and look for areas of improvement
7. Support and promote all wellness services, EAP services, Hub Healthy Habit Portal and Biometric screenings
8. Report back to local leaders and encourage sustainability of wellness committee through the years.  Report on areas of improvement as well as areas that we are excelling.
9. Follow up after exiting location - Meet monthly with wellness committee members via phone
10. Provide monthly wellness tools and resources such as; webinars, newsletters, portal support, wellness challenges, tips and social media support for health and wellness.

To generate better results, I focused on HUB’s wellness initiative to be actionable and simple, something everyone at every fitness level could join and become a part of.  Here are five things that I did to generate awareness and begin creating results at our company

1. Meet the employees where their at or where their comfortable starting.  Keep it simple; take the hassle factor out of wellness at work.  This is directly related to an employee’s health status and how the employees preserve the wellness program.  
2. Get employees moving by taking active breaks two or three times in the day. I provided each employee with a resistance band and held education sessions on why active breaks are so beneficial to improve energy levels, mental focus and overall performance.  Then I worked with each wellness committee to continue this education while I was traveling to other Hub locations. 

• Also, I implemented new active break rooms at many of our HUB locations.  
• I took unused office space and converted it into a safe place for employees to be active while at work.  
• Our active break rooms were implemented for less than $1,000 dollars.  
• Light fitness equipment was brought into the room including bands, stability balls, foam rollers, mats, a scale, and free weights up to 25 lbs.
• I then held education sessions, reviewing safety and teaching why each piece of equipment is beneficial.  
• I also held one-on-one training sessions for interested employees

3. Nutrition education – eating light and eating often.  Educating employees about the benefits to eating every 3-3.5 hours and never going more than 4 hours without eating. This lead into changing snacks at the office or getting employees to bring snacks to work.

• Implementing snack breaks strategically in their day and also traveling smarter.
• Understanding that you must pack healthy snacks in your carryon while on business trips as well as educating what are better snacks and healthy meals throughout the day.
• Educating on the 5 handful guide that will help employees stabilize their blood glucose levels all day long.  

4. Positive self talk and restorative sleep – helping employees understand that how we think is a huge part of the decisions we make.  How one thinks can determine if someone will walk to work verses take a cab or if that employee will cook healthy for their family at the end of the day.  Our thoughts control our emotions which come out in our physical somehow.  It’s important to tackle the issue of positive self talk within any organization and help employee find ways to discover what their inner voice is telling them or what choices they are making based on their inner voice.  
5. Let the ideas and sustainability of the Hub Healthy Habits wellness initiative come from the employees and not HR or Corporate.  Allow the employees to decide what is important to them in a wellness program and let the wellness committee members implement those ideas at their local hub locations.   This is directly related to creating a culture of health from the ground up.

Compelling Vision
My vision for Health Promotion goes beyond four walls of our company or any company in America.  My vision for health promotion is that Health becomes the top priority of all employees’ lives and businesses are built around the health and happiness of their employees.   The biggest threat to health promotion is the hassle factor that is placed upon employees.  Employees want simple solutions, one stop shops to wellness at low cost.  

Education is key, from the moment an employee applies to a company, they should be educated on how the company views health and that it is key to the success of that employee to remain healthy and come to work with positive energy.  I feel this should be part of a performance review.  Not everyone knows how to have the best energy through nutrition, movement and good restoring habits and that is what I want to teach coworkers about.  Simply put, I want coworkers to understand how their physical body’s energy is affected by their own glucose story.  And that can affect mood, focus, hunger, cravings, decisions and behaviors.  Education and teaching the “why” will open doors to changing cultures.  

Along with great education is that wellness is personal for everyone and we need to create ways to get the personal touch back in corporate wellness.  One way is in-person wellness coaching and nutrition coaching.  I feel in-person coaching will be more valuable at helping to combat work-place obesity and immerging risks then telephonic coaching.  They are both great but the reason Personal Trainers are highly successful at helping clients is that personal trainers become connected with their clients on level that current wellness programs have not found to match.  We are getting close with new technology and visual coaching but we still have some walls that can be broken to really help employees find the right services that create compelling reasons to choose lasting healthy behaviors. 

Another area that I’d like to see wellness take shape and partner with is in the Leadership and development departments.  Making wellness classes available as part of an employee’s educational development.  Teaching managers how to positively motivate coworkers towards healthy behaviors and higher performance while at work or traveling for work.  We can’t go home with employees but we can motivate employees to live out their best life while at work and I’d like to see more educational development around this area for employees.  

Lastly, wellness is about action.  Our body is made to move, our systems depend on movement. I would like to see wellness programs become more hands-on and active as appose to email communications that are sent out from vendors.  Wellness programs that are based on heart-rate monitoring and using devices are a great place to start. Wellness is actionable and the only way to combat the obesity epidemic and decrease risk factors is through three balanced actions, physical movement, restoration/sleep and healthy nutrition habits (planning, preparing, and cooking nutritionally).  If we could place corporate policies and/or guidelines around these three areas of health, we would be a much healthier and happier corporate America.