Our story

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While directing Playworks DC, Susan receives the Pentagon's “Spiritual Fitness Award” for developing a Brain Breaks lunchtime talk for U.S. Department of Defense civilian staff. This same year, Ty serves as an instructional coach and athletic director at DCPS's West Education Campus, which Playworks was serving, however Susan and Ty don't (yet) meet.

Ty takes a sabbatical from education, becomes certified in Pilates, and starts directing a yoga studio. Susan watches with the rest of the world as the U.S. election yields alarming results for the nonprofit sector.

Stress accumulated greatly after the election, and school stress accumulated with new shooting and lockdown drills. Susan fields a Nonprofit Burnout Survey in December, attracting 240 responses from over 100 groups across the country. These responses inspired the Pilot project in 2018.

Susan begins 8-month Georgetown certificate program on Organizational Development, using the survey responses to design a Nonprofit Pilot that evaluates self-care and team-care wellness interventions at 12 groups in DC. Susan is the only American invited to lead trainings at a TechSoup Europe conference in Romania. This is also the big year that Susan finally meets Ty (whose studio contributed classes to the Pilot).

Ty begins her doctoral dissertation and helps adapt Susan’s  Personal Stress Prescription and Stressor Scorecard tools for an educator audience. A grant supports publishing the “Wellness Equity Report” on the Nonprofit Pilot (See the Research tab)

The year happened to begin with weekly webinars to build a YouTube channel, so when the pandemic hit, Susan and Ty were already experienced with online trainings. They expanded Zoom offerings with a growing team of diverse trainers and team-building wellness experiences. In the midst of pandemic, we published our report --  See  the Pilot results!  -- and Nonprofit Wellness  was chosen for a CityBridge Education program. 

Nonprofit Wellness completes the CityBridge "Innovators in Equity" program with a business plan to become a 501(c)3 and serve more schools and nonprofits. The 501c3 is approved, officially, by the end  of the year. 

Ty and Susan continue to mentor GWU students who are pursuing their Masters of Public Health degree, in official "practicum" internship programs. By 2022, Nonprofit Wellness has served as Preceptor to more than 12 MPH students. 

The nonprofit board of Nonprofit Wellness thanks its  founding chair, Terri Shuck, welcomes new chair Daniel Medina, and welcomes former GWU interns Diana Aguilera and Meghin Brooks as board members. We bring on new clients, like Co.act Detroit and Schott Foundation for Public Education.

Ty earns her doctorate in Education with her dissertation, "Whole Leaders, Whole Schools: Increasing School Leaders' Emotional Intelligence Through Mindfulness" and continues her leadership at Sojourner Truth School (middle/high Montessori public charter in D.C.). Susan becomes an adjunct faculty member at American University, teaching "Strategies for Stress Management" to undergrads. Nonprofit Wellness supervises its 5th through 7th cohorts of MPH practicum interns from the GWU Milken Institute.