Leslie Riopel,

MA PSYCHOLOGY

Leslie is a Certified Mindfulness Instructor, Course Creation Specialist and Enthusiastic and Passionate Psychology Professor as well as a Creative Writer, and Content Developer.

As a Psychology Professor Leslie has over 10 years of classroom experience in Higher Education. Leslie is also a course design and creation expert and a mindfulness and meditation teacher in addition to being a freelance writer and content developer. In her role as a psychology professor and educator, she is skilled in multiple learning platforms including Blackboard and Canvas. 

Leslie is creative and resourceful, and an advocate for promoting mindfulness and healthy workplace cultures. Leslie is a talented instructor and skilled communicator as well as a skilled copywriter and editor and a life-long learner and lover of knowledge. Leslie also has over 25 years of experience as a real estate client services manager and over 11 years of experience as a copywriter and editor. Leslie has a unique blend of experience in education and teaching, real estate, mindfulness, and psychology that has allowed her to focus on fostering healthy workplaces that thrive. Leslie’s specialties also include co-creative visioning and strategic planning, establishing, and managing strategic alliances, marketing and promotion, publishing (electronic and print) and internet marketing.

MINDFULNESS, MEDITATION AND COURSE CREATION WORK

As a mind-body healing practitioner and a mindfulness expert, Leslie has created over 20 personal development and mind-body healing courses, including a mindfulness-based stress reduction course and a mindfulness for children course. As part of her non-profit Planet Blessed, Inc., Leslie has also designed several unique mindfulness-based healing courses to help people manage PTSD, align with the energy of self-healing, and overcome obstacles, amongst other things.

Leslie has a master’s degree in Psychology and has been writing about and studying mindfulness for over a decade. Leslie’s unique blend of experience in Real Estate, Mindfulness, and Psychology has allowed her to focus on fostering healthy workplaces that thrive. Leslie is also a freelance writer, published author, and an authority in the psychology of mindfulness and has over 11 years of experience in the wellness industry as a writer and editor. Leslie’s work is centered around mindfulness, meditation, and healing via the smartbody.

Leslie has created a multitude of products, programs, and services in the health and wellness and mindfulness genre over the last several years. In addition to her work creating mindfulness programs, she also specializes in writing and recording guided meditations and hypnotherapy scripts.

​Leslie Believes That Each of Us Can Heal the World By First healing Our Own Trauma and Pain.

​Leslie is also the creator of PlanetMindfulness.com, PlanetBlessed.org and the CEO of the SMART Heart-Mind-Body Foundation as well as the creator of smartbodygreen.com.

Charles Betterton,

MSCED

Charles Betterton has been helping individuals, organizations and communities “Bless the Mess” for over 50 years in several innovative ways.

For example, he received an unsolicited grant at the age of 21 from the American Friends Service Committee to support desegregation of the public schools in the Mississippi Delta. Through the grant Charles created a partnership of over 40 community leaders who helped build public support for a Community Development Center where children of all ages and races were welcomed and encouraged to develop their talents. 

​That “Bless the Mess” experience led to Charles volunteering to serve as a disaster relief worker when 16 Mississippi Counties were struck by tornadoes in 1971. Instead he was hired as a temporary employee and began a career with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  He served with HUD for 12 years as a “Bless the Mess” disaster recovery expert, a turn-around-management “trouble-shooter” and community development specialist. While serving in the Detroit HUD Area Office he received the highest cash award ever paid a HUD employee for a modification he made to a property management information that saved an estimated 300 million dollars.  THAT was a powerful example of “Blessing the Mess!”

In addition to serving with local and national government, Charles has decades of experience in leadership positions with nonprofit organizations. For example, he founded and served as Executive Director of the Kankakee County Community Development Corporation. He played a major role in transforming a vacant National Guard Armory building that was going to be torn down for parking into an award-winning “Bless the Mess” Community Resource Center that generated over two million dollars of financial support and served tens of thousands of residents.

Charles has a master’s degree from Southern New Hampshire University in Community Economic Development which encompasses Self-help, Empowerment, and Capacity-building. He designed and facilitates co-creative visioning and strategic planning for companies, non-profit organizations, chambers of commerce, and communities, especially those in need of help addressing social, cultural, and economic challenges.

​He created and produced Community Unity Celebrations and CAN DO! personal and community development training programs featuring world-class authors and trainers such as Norman Vincent Peale, Les Brown, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, and Mark Victor Hansen for up to 1,800 participants (in a county of only 100,000 that suffered from decades of racial, geographic, political divisiveness).

Charles is dedicated to Expanding the Circle of Success to provide greater access to development training programs not readily available to youth and other underserved populations. His ultimate vision is helping establish a University for Successful Living (USL) with a network of locally initiated Empowerment Resource Centers that will deliver training on successful life, work and entrepreneurship skills. He and Leslie and their collaborators have already developed many of the 101 resources the USL will provide for Solving Life’s Ultimate Success Puzzles.

His primary social media accounts are: