About Us

Ann and Karen are master teachers and popular public speakers who have taught hundreds of classes, primarily in communication and women studies, at both Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, and at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Combining the concepts and practice of creativity, both have received the university’s highest teaching award. Teaching thousands of students, they have witnessed countless struggles with either/or thinking and with ineffective ways to get unstuck. Their teaching experiences motivated the writing of Color Up: Decisions to Thrive On and the COLORFULL LIVES PROJECT.

Ann Skinner-Jones, artist, art therapist, art educator and film maker, is the producer and director of award-winning videos for the educational market, including The Great Divide and You Like Totally Have to Talk About It. Her film work deals with creatively managing intractable and polarized issues. She regularly teaches Visual Communication, Nonverbal Communication, Public Speaking and her signature course that is renowned among students, Women and Creativity. Ann also teaches studio art classes in photography, film, and painting. She holds an MFA from the Art Institute in San Francisco, and an MA in Art Education with an emphasis in Art Therapy from the University of New Mexico.

Ann’s photo shoots have taken her to locales in the Caribbean and throughout the Asian-Pacific region, and her work has been exhibited in galleries nationwide. She has conducted workshops on various aspects of the creative process at colleges and universities and in community settings. She has been in private practice for ten years, working with the dilemmas of clients’ lives and using art for healing in a variety of ways. For four years, she used art in educational rehabilitation programs for incarcerated youth. Ann is currently Assistant Director of Admissions at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, and Gallery Director of NoneSuch Space/Paragon Media in Oakland, CA.
 

Professor, scholar, and writer Karen Foss, Ph.D., is the coauthor of eight books that help to challenge and reframe the fields of communication and women studies. She teaches courses such as gender and communication; women, agency, and change; public speaking; and communication theory. Karen has a PhD in Communication from the University of Iowa and an MA in Communication from the University of Oregon. She is professor of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Named Regents Professor at the University of New Mexico and Scholar of the Year at Humboldt State University—the highest research awards offered by these institutions—she has been on the forefront of bringing women’s issues into the scholarship of communication. She was also awarded the Francine Merritt Award by the National Communication Association, for contributions to the lives of women in communication, and Gender Scholar of the Year for 2005 by the Southern Communication Association. She is frequently invited to serve as keynote speaker on issues of women’s communication, women’s agency and change, and feminist perspectives; recent addresses have included the McGann Lecture series at Stanford University and the Utah State University Centennial Series. She recently served as a Senior Specialist with the Fulbright program to Odense, Denmark.