Ask a New Yorker: Actress, optimist, coach. Where to start?
Stacey: I don’t like to call myself an actual coach. I have a PHD in clinical
psychology. I’m more of a leadership consultant and leadership strategist.
Actually, I empower people to think about who they are as leaders and how that
impacts their business and their personal and professional lives. It’s
really about the dynamics of change in human behavior and what it takes to be
a leader–being a non-conformist sometimes and not being popular and how one
stays centered in ones leadership zone.
Ask a New Yorker: I’m digging this. Please continue.
Stacey: An interesting fact is that most people see me now as a professional,
successful and I’m out there speaking about empowerment and leadership
and involved in so many “corporate America” industries. The interesting
thing is that I left home at seventeen and I put myself through undergrad living
on like five dollars a day doing anything I could that was legal, living in
bad neighborhoods, the South Bronx, Harlem, bad sections of Brooklyn just to
be able to afford going to school and being in a really academically intense
medical program, a psych program, at The
Albert Einstein College of Medicine where everybody said, “There’s
no way you’re going to make it” and “You’re never going
to do this”, including the medical school themselves who said we never
had someone who worked full time and actually put themselves through school
and do well.
Ask a New Yorker: That’s very admirable, how does the ‘actress’
fit into the scheme of things?
Stacey: So ,as I said, I left home at seventeen and I thought I was going to
be an actress and study on Broadway. I went to SUNY Purchase. And again–I’m
always out of the box. No one knows where to put me. I loved acting. I studied
musical theater. But at the same time I was an academic and I wanted to be smart
and I wanted to take academic classes in the natural science division. People
told me again I couldn’t do both. So what I did was sign on for the natural
science major and then I convinced the head of the music department to let me
take all the classes.
Ask a New Yorker: Any theater recommendations?
Stacey: I would see “Promises, Promises. I personally saw Memphis with
my kids and loved it, very inspirational. The music is great, great story.
Ask a New Yorker: You’re a glass-half-full type of person, very optimistic.
Stacey: People say that to me all the time, based on my background, because
we lived in poverty. My parents were on welfare at points in their lives. They
had four kids. We lived in a very small house in upstate New York and all this
other stuff. I just never saw the world that way. My father was a huge influence
in my life. He was behind me all the way. He was the one who told me that I
could do anything I wanted to do and I was meant to do something really special
and unique. I always looked at the world like it’s waiting to happen and
I have to find it. Even living on the South Bronx, at times surrounded by poverty,
I never felt sorry for myself. I never felt sad. I always felt that I could
make a difference. And I’m going to come back and I’m going to change
the lives of other girls who don’t feel like that they have the capacity
to do that.
Ask a New Yorker: What is Unleashed?
Stacey: Going back to the roots of all of this is that I left poor neighborhoods
and went through my graduate program determined to go back, come full circle
and help girls who didn’t have the power to think that they could create
a difference in the world for themselves or their them families or for society.
They didn’t even ever have those dreams like I did. I created Unleashed
actually because I did a two year research project with women in power. I studied
powerful women and the two things I found were: Earlier influences shape a girls
perception of power and how she uses it. Second, women will use their power
more effectively when they can create impact and are passionate about a cause.
It doesn’t matter what the cause is. It has to be personal to them. Then
I went out and did focus groups with girls and I realized one thing they really
loved is animals. And yet they can’t go out and volunteer because shelters
don’t want them. They’re sick and tired of being told that they
cannot make a difference and nobody trusts that can do anything worthwhile.
So I created Unleashed. What Unleashed is, is that I took the passion of the
dogs and the puppies and created a leadership curriculum, and I’m partnering
with Girls for a Change, who are
a fifteen year organization. Unleashed teaches girls how to be social change
agents. We use puppy rescue as our leadership laboratory. So I tapped into the
passion that the girls felt about the puppies. It’s really a vulnerable
time of their lives and they can’t even think about homelessness or big
issues related to people. But it’s really safe to talk about how they
can save the life of a puppy. So Unleashed is actually a social change agent
program, teaching girls leadership skills. Then the girls transfer that to other
causes, to themselves, their families, their communities. They lead and learn
how to build confidence and communication. They work in teams. So they have
to learn how to get along, negotiate and resolve conflicts. It’s a twelve
week program. We’re launching in three schools in New York City in the
Fall.
Ask a New Yorker: Sounds terrific!
Stacey: It really is. We’ve saved forty puppies since January. The deep
rural South needs are help more than anyone. They don’t have the leash
laws that we have and the poverty and lack of rescores is incredible.
Ask a New Yorker: Your academic life is evident but how is your athletic life?
Do you play tennis?
Stacey: No. I run. A funny story is that my son thinks he’s exactly like
me. I saw an essay he wrote about me and how we are so much alike except for
the fact, “I’m athletic and she’s not” and I said, “I
run, that’s a sport, Justin”. He doesn’t think so.
Ask a New Yorker: What is your favorite restaurant in New York?
Stacey: I like Del Posto. I like
eating down in the meat packing district. It’s fun. There’s a lot
of energy.
Ask a New Yorker: Will there be a woman President in our life time?
Stacey: For certain. I mean we we’re almost there, could have been their
last time. So close.
Ask a New Yorker: Palin?
Stacey: No! It’s going to be the right woman, NOT just any woman.
Ask a New Yorker: Good luck with everything you are doing Stacey, and thanks
for sharing with us.
(Unleashed is having a fundraising event called “A Diamond
in the Ruff” on July 13, 2010, from 6pm-9pm at Vino Vino Wine Bar/Maslow
6 Wineshop at 211 W. Broadway. If you would like more details, contact kennedy@askanewyorker.com
for info)
