Meet Candy

Award-winning actor, author, filmmaker;  

nurse, mom, and

interactive motivational speaker.  

The 'side-hustle' as a commercial actor, doing voice-overs, commercials, and television spots, was a fun diversion from the often-difficult work as an intensive care nurse.

 

After awhile, she felt she really needed to laugh again, so she began studying stand-up and improv comedy, and soon co-founded an improv company, The Barely Insane Players, in the San Francisco area.  

 

In 1995, at the request of an audience-member, she began teaching applied improv skills to a series of Silicon Valley start-ups, then to other groups.

Meanwhile, although she was performing and teaching improv regularly, and federal research surfaced about the mistakes and deaths caused by miscommunication in healthcare, she could not get a toe in the door of any healthcare organization to help solve the problem by sharing improv principles.

 

The resistance was: “no evidence the method works in healthcare.” Oy!
 

That concern morphed into her doctoral work with interprofessional groups at Stanford’s LPCH, to emphasize the benefits of applied improv training in communication,  team building, inclusivity, and spontaneous, creative solution-finding that nurtures resilience and curbs burn-out.

 

This work has expanded to become a series of books on the subject, published by Business Expert Press,  (See BOOKS)