About Us

Founder and Principal Muse: Jeanne Hillson

Jeanne Hillson, M.Ed., is a skilled and resourceful creative spirit who has been designing and leading engaging learning experiences for over twenty-five 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 that foster deliberate creative thinking.   Over the years, through workshops, keynotes, and individual coaching, she has inspired people at all levels of both corporate and non-profit organizations to exercise, develop and apply their innate creativity.

Jeanne has trained as a Creativity Coach with 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 (LSW, Massachusetts, 1983-2000), 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
  • coached new instructors from diverse industries, and
  • delivered over 400 varied seminars to a wide variety of government agencies and Fortune 500 companies on how to analyze, organize and present information effectively. She worked with national and international audiences, ranging from policy writers at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta to technical writers in Riga, Latvia.

Jeanne is also a certified Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) practitioner.

Passions

Jeanne enjoys writing: She has written and/or edited a variety of technical and procedural documentation; codesigned and wrote content for an interactive CD of simulations to accompany a Houghton Mifflin college text on business communications; has created a variety of case studies and course material; and is currently trying her hand at poetry.

Other passions include collage, New Yorker cartoons, yoga, hiking, and crunchy almond butter.

Jeanne was a founding member of two theater groups: Midnight Special, an experimental theatre company in Washington, DC, and New Tricks, a Boston improv troupe of actors “in their second half of life.” She has also performed with The Naughty Nanas sketch troupe (think "murder," not lingerie...) in shows and short videos, and has co-taught improv classes for retirement community audiences.

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. 

She has also taken a wide variety of courses in group facilitation, conflict resolution, and improvisational theater.