Our Team

With 25 years of international management consulting and business leadership experience, and a passion for creativity, transformation and human development, Laurie is dedicated to helping people learn mindfulness to live with meaning and lead with purpose-driven performance. As a former Accenture management consultant and business executive with three companies, her clients tell her she  “gets their challenges” – in how she translates mindfulness into practical language and applications for everyday life.

Laurie founded PURPOSEBLUE on her realization that mindfulness is the foundational competency for achieving human potential,  happiness and optimal well-being.  Mindful, resilient leaders deepen their self-awareness and self-mastery, which allows them to be in a place of choice during difficult moments. Mindful Leaders are able to stay connected to purpose and thrive during uncertainty, change, and the distractions of our tech world.

Elizabeth Ouren joined PurposeBlue as the Client Program Management Lead. Elizabeth worked at Accenture for 12 years on client projects located in Houston, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Bakersfield, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Early in her career she worked with Fortune 50 clients as a computer systems and process engineer, and later as a senior program manager ran several large multi-site systems implementations. Dedicated to community and social service, Elizabeth has passionately held leadership roles for many projects and boards in her local public school district and in the community. Elizabeth recently worked at an international start-up in Menlo Park managing operations, people, and recruiting. Elizabeth is passionate about improving the day-to-day lives of people and is thrilled to work with PurposeBlue’s clients.

Virginia Hilliard, also known as Daisy, is dedicated to exploring organizational cultures and behavior to enhance human performance and experience in the workplace. Prior to joining PurposeBlue, Daisy became a certified Corporate Wellness Specialist, and deepened her study of human potential in Oregon, learning human behavior patterns and communication techniques through Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology (NLP/HNLP) training.

Daisy graduated from Washington College with a degree in Psychology and Business Management. She finished with an independent, experimental research study focused on using self-focused attention and mindfulness to optimize performance and productivity for organizations and their employees. Her experience includes Baltimore’s Advertising Firm, MGH, Inc. and New York City’s top Public Relations Agency, Sharp Communications, Inc.

Daisy continually grows her mindfulness practice and knowledge of everyday, brain-based techniques to enhance emotional intelligence and human potential. If she is not reading up on the subject, you will find her running, skiing or dancing to live music.

Lori Schwanbeck is focused on the conditions that enable people to thrive in their personal and professional life. Her unique blend of qualifications as a marketing professional, psychotherapist, and mindfulness teacher, enable her to deliver a depth of knowledge along with practical skills that support change. Lori is passionate about creating lives of meaning, engagement and optimal performance with her clients.

As a Certified Search Inside Yourself teacher (SIY), Lori has taught leadership and mindfulness-based emotional intelligence in: Australia, Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Senegal, Brazil, United States, and Asia. Her clients include: United Nations, Capitol One, Enbridge, Tennis Australia, Apple, Rotman School of Business, Microsoft, Nan Fung, and Google. Lori also has a lead role in program development and teacher training at SIY.

In addition to international corporate training, Lori co-founded Mindfulness Therapy Associates, a psychotherapy and coaching practice in San Francisco. She specializes in working with individual executives and business partners in skillfully managing difficult business relationships and navigating change. She has developed Sense and Sensibility, a skills training program utilizing mindful engagement of the senses to gain emotional balance.

Lori began her journey in Canada where she earned a degree in Commerce and worked in marketing for CP Rail, Kraft General Foods, and obtained a Masters degree in Transpersonal Psychology. Her teaching cultivates self-awareness in the physical, mental and emotional domains to increase wisdom and to create an engaged and inspired life.

Dana Pulley is an accomplished leader, coach, facilitator and consultant who has learned first hand how mindful awareness enables you to lead and live in a more fulfilling way. For more than 20 years, she’s brought her contagious passion for growth and development to individuals and organizations in the professional service industry. She is a frequent speaker and workshop facilitator on mindfulness, embodied learning, and the intersection with neuroscience. She is a certified corporate-based mindfulness instructor with the Potential Project and the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. Dana is also an ICF-certified coach, a graduate of Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership.

Dana held senior leadership positions with Booz Allen Hamilton, a Fortune 500 consulting firm. She managed a division that provided strategy, organization development, leadership development, talent management, learning and change management services to Federal government clients.

Paul is skilled at helping clients navigate the stress-inducing demands of the modern workplace and enabling them to operate with focus, clarity and insight. Blending recent neuroscience findings in emotions and leadership, Paul provides his clients with a 21st Century roadmap of tools to operate with confidence, joy, and enhanced focus. He brings a wealth of experience in leadership and organization development, mindfulness, and practically to his engagement with global clients. He is a long-term contributor to executive education programs at top business schools in Boston and France.

Paul began his professional life as a photojournalist with the U.S. Coast Guard. Upon the completion of his military service, he became the General Manager at Northeastern University’s executive education conference center. He is on the delivery team of several long-standing leadership training programs helping his participants integrate life and work successfully. With a long-standing meditation practice, Paul believes that effective leaders are highly self-aware individuals who can inspire others to achieve their potential and generate desired business results.

Michelle Maldonado is passionate about elevating humanity through business. She dedicates her work to teaching leaders and their teams how to integrate conscious business practices with sound strategic planning, operations, human resource management, and corporate development initiatives.

An engaging facilitator, Michelle is a Certified Search Inside Yourself teacher (SIY) who leverages her more than 30 years of meditation practice and two decades of business and legal experience to create relevant and practical solutions to transform how we “show up” as more compassionate, impactful and resilient leaders.

Michelle’s work on the natural convergence of leadership competencies with mindfulness, neuroscience, emotional intelligence and conscious business practices has been presented to organizations across diverse industries including Cisco, Dollar General Corporation, American Public University System and Northern Virginia Conscious Business Alliance (which she founded). Michelle’s work has been featured in conference keynotes and leading industry publications including Leadership Excellence, Human Capital Insights, Training, and Chief Learning Officer magazines.