Jean Morrison has been providing trainings, consultation, and mediation for diverse groups and organizations for the past 35 years and in 2005, co-founded Galloping Giraffe Enterprises and Grok the World with Christine King. Since her childhood in rural Northern California, Jean has had strong values for compassionate communication, personal responsibility, healthy lifestyle, honest expression, clarity, playful connections, resourceful living, creativity, and life-long learning.

These values are the core of her work with her clients and her personal projects. Her range of work experiences include:

• past co-ordinator for the Alternatives to Violence Project at San Quentin State Prison and the introduction of NVC to their Pre-Release Program
• staff trainings, public retreats, and month-long Work Scholar Leader in Mindful Communication at the world-renowned Esalen Retreat facility in Big Sur, California
• business consulting and retreat design; trainings for educators and parents
• facilitated dialogues for couples and families; and personal coaching sessions.

Jean’s work integrates whole brain learning and thinking, experiential learning and interactive games, lifestyle management, and the Enneagram system of personality studies. She is a certified trainer with the international Center for Nonviolent Communication since 1989, a founding member of NVC Santa Cruz since 2004, and Co-Founder/creator of GROKtheWORLD.com  - communication products "to get to the heart of what matters most."

Her focus and philosophy in her interpersonal counseling and facilitated dialogue work is based on these universal values ~~

• to be heard, seen, and valued; a sense of belonging
• to learn to give and receive understanding, acceptance and empathy
• to trust that we can speak our honesty about ourselves in a way that minimizes the reactive and defensive patterns in our listeners
• to be able to diffuse and transform our patterns that lead to dis-connection and disruption
• to create environments and relationships where our needs are mutually satisfied

For more fun she visits and takes vacations with her daughter Kelly, plays boogie blues piano, loves improvisation and theater games, ping pong, drawing and painting, lives in a small beach town, and enjoys creative projects as well as service-oriented projects with friends. She enjoys spending quality time with friends and family, creating artful stuff, and being in nature as much as possible. Living alongside the Pacific Ocean with biking and hiking trails right out her door is a bonus to her healthy lifestyle.