A Conversation With: Patti Talbot

Welcome to this installment of The Wellness Universe’s ‘A Conversation With …’ interview series! We will feature interviews from some of our amazing WU World Changers so you can learn about who they are as a person, their profession, mission, and their why!’

Welcome to A Conversation with Patti Talbot, Ed.D –

CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Roads Education Group.

The Wellness Universe directory is a resource and community filled with Change-Makers; we call WU World-Changers (Wellness Universe World-Changers). Today we want to introduce you to Patti Talbot.

Her mission is to cultivate homegrown Changemakers, Solutionaries, and Social Innovators that are ready to change the world. 

1. Hello Patti, will you please tell us about yourself?

I’ve been a career educator who’s now begun my own socially driven business to generate positive social change while what I call cultivating homegrown changemakers. When someone asks me, “how’s retirement?” I tell everyone, “I’m NOT retired. I’m refocused. I’m not really the retiring type, but I do love being my own boss and making my own rules about when, how, and with whom to work on something that I believe in very passionately.”

2. Patti, what is it that inspires you?

Changemakers inspire me! I define changemakers as people who use their unique whole-beings to connect with other unique whole-beings to create innovative solutions that ripple out and make a better world for everyone on the planet. I’m blown away by the many people I’ve met who do just that.

3. Will you please tell us what you call yourself and explain what it is that you do?

I go by “Patti.” I know that anyone who calls me “Pat” or “Patricia” doesn’t know me at all. What I do is cultivate social changemakers. That means I celebrate changemakers and support their work; however I can. I teach people of all ages and stages how they can be a changemaker, too.

4. How exactly does that help someone?

When people discover that they actually have within their power the ability to make real and lasting change in the world, they get really inspired and excited to take action in significant ways on the issues that are troubling them. They move from discouragement into action pretty quickly once they see how to develop change-making characteristics in themselves.

5. Why are you so passionate about helping people become changemakers?

I’m passionate about changemakers because I’m absolutely amazed at what a difference regular folks like me can make when we put our minds and our best selves into it, gather others with different experiences from our own, and take action.

6. Did any specific life experience prompt you to follow this path?

My passion for cultivating changemakers grew out of a developing understanding of global citizenship\’s great importance in our increasingly interconnected world. I had several kinds of embarrassing and eye-opening moments that brought this home to me in a big way.

Even as an adult with quite a lot of leadership experience, I felt terribly out of my element when I finally had the opportunity to travel abroad to work closely with people from different cultures from my own. Even though I was friendly and, I thought, open-minded, I had quite a lot of preconceived notions about how people “ought” to do things. I then started to look inside myself and recognize that perhaps I was the clueless one.

From there, I started studying cultural competencies and cross-cultural communication in earnest. The more I learned, the more I knew I had to help others do so, too, much earlier in their lives than I had.

7. How long have you been doing this?

I like to think I’ve been cultivating changemakers my whole career as an educator – teacher, counselor, principal, and college professor. But I’ve been using this specific language and framework for the past couple of years, as I’ve developed a framework that brings together the work I’ve been doing for over 35 years.

8. Will you share a story of how you have made a difference in someone’s life?

I just finished teaching a pilot course for a wonderful group of women I call “The WWW – Well-Intentioned White Women.” I call the course “Tender and Brave: Authentic Anti-Racism for the WWW.”  One of my most recent students had this to say about her experience in the class, “I learned a lot about myself and my actions and reactions to the world we live in. I learned to evaluate my ‘instincts.’ I learned I have blind spots I need to work on. And that doing this in a small group of women who had different experiences than I have had was very enlightening and meaningful.” 

9. What’s next on the horizon for you?

Several of the women in the course asked to keep working together, so I’ve developed a “Part 2” for the course and a “Changemaker Circle” that’s kind of like a mastermind group for social changemakers. I’ll soon be kicking off several more sections of the class, too!

10. Thank you so much for sharing today, Patti! Do you have any final thoughts?

My framework for change-making focuses on four quadrants related to being, doing, connecting, and reflecting; Not just internal reflection, but what you reflect out into the world about your priorities, mindset, and focus. 

What seems to resonate for me is the great work we can all do if we remain grounded in our own lived experiences while opening our minds to the source of all knowledge and creativity, in sync with the pulse of all beings in the universe. From there, we really can embrace the world and find a meaningful place for ourselves within it. 

If you would like to connect with Patti Talbot, please visit: https://www.thewellnessuniverse.com/world-changers/patriciatalbot/

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