About Us

Founder and Principal Muse: Jeanne Hillson

Jeanne Hillson, M.Ed., is a creative spirit who has been leading engaging learning experiences for twenty years.

Through intensive study at the International Center for Creative Studies, Buffalo, NY, Jeanne explored creativity research, theory, and practice, and was trained to facilitate the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process and a wide variety of tools and techniques of deliberate creativity.   Over the years, she has presented workshops, keynotes, and individual coaching to inspire people at all levels of both corporate and non-profit organizations to exercise and develop their innate creativity and produce brilliant solutions--on purpose!

She also has training in Creativity Coaching from Jill Badonsky and Eric Maisel, and is a skilled and resourceful guide into and through the delicate, complex, nonlinear creative process.

Prior to founding Apply Imagination!, Jeanne worked as

• a Training and Development Consultant at Digital Equipment Corporation, where she co-designed and ran DEC's first dedicated Career Development Center
• a Licensed Social Worker, helping individuals and groups through transitions:
  • women reentering the workforce after years at home
  • individuals desiring more fulfilling relationships or careers, and
  • clients in the Massachusetts mental health system transitioning from hospitalization to life in the community.
• an Outplacement Consultant with Right Management Associates, where she helped executives and groups
  • manage change
  • rethink their authentic skills and interests, and
  • identify and pursue new career opportunities.
• a Certifying Instructor for Information Mapping, Inc., where she has
  • coached new instructors from diverse industries, and
  • delivered over 400 varied seminars to a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, working with clients ranging from training managers in New Jersey to technical writers in Riga, Latvia.

Jeanne is also a Certified Consultant for the Myers Briggs Type Indicator for individuals and teams.

Passions

Jeanne enjoys writing (she codesigned and wrote content for Urban Systems, an interactive CD that brought a Houghton Mifflin college text alive) and is now working on a book about developing creativity in everyday life.

Other passions include New Yorker cartoons, rebus art, dance, and peanut m&m's. Jeanne was a founding member of Midnight Special, an experimental theatre company in Washington, DC, and is now a founding member of New Tricks, a Boston improv troupe of actors “in their second half of life.”

Formal Education

Jeanne holds a BA in English (cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and completed her Master's in Education (based on her work in Buffalo) at Cambridge College, Cambridge, MA.