Elaine Parke
Interviews, Speaking and Consulting
Interview & Speaking Topics

Elaine Parke, MBA, CS, CM, NSA

 

“I am now nice to the people I used to be mean to.”

 

This 2016 survey quote from a 6th grader, sums up the results of Elaine Parke’s life, passion, mission, and work. This is because she knows that motivating even a few more of us to be nice to the people we used to be mean to would go a long way towards unifying and healing America.

 

For 30 years, her scalable and evidence-driven, 12 habits social unity model, 12 Habits 4 All of Us, has transformed several million community citizens and youth to feel more caring and connected to one another – across the USA’s Midwest, and in Rwanda.

 

Mrs. Parke is an informed and stimulating media guest and speaker who readily shares her stunningly simple, attractive, and grow-able solution to speed our progress toward a sustainable civilization through mutual respect and kindness. In 1993, her monthly-branded and colorful habit-forming model was deemed a “Social Invention” by the London Institute for Social Inventions.

 

Elaine is available as an interview guest, a speaker or as a consultant to assist you if you would like to begin a 12 Habits 4 All of Us campaign in your own community or on your media or social media outlet. She can be reached at elaine_parke@yahoo.com or at 814-779-2060

 

Born in Coshocton, OH, in January of 1942, just a month after Pearl Harbor, Elaine’s life spans the post WWII trajectory of the US culture through industrialization and into the transformative technological whirlwind of mass communications and the internet.

 

“We smugly praise our civilization as technologically advanced. There is, however, a catastrophic price. Society is collapsing under the massive weight of social and economic inequality, racialism, and the power-enabled and greed-driven greed of corporate, and political, and climate of insensitive

corruption.” – Elaine Parke

 

In this book’s introductory section, Parke retells the Cherokee parable of the struggle between the two wolves of good and bad that is always going on inside each of us. This struggle is also raging throughout America and around the world, fueled by the massive growth of technology. Sadly, The momentum, so far in the 21st century, is feeding the bad wolf of destruction. Parke is determined to help transform the momentum towards the good wolf.

 

Parke is a lifelong youth-volunteer. At age 19, TIME Magazine reported on Elaine’s tutoring and mentoring work with Chicago Racketeer, Cobra and Vice-Lord gang kids. Then, a liberal arts student at Northwestern University she asked herself, “How do we expand the scope of positive, connecting, and more humane influence to reach more people more easily?”

 

First, she spent twenty-five years fine-tuning her mass-market media skills in corporate America. There, her multi-media campaigns for various corporate products reached and motivated the buying behaviors of millions of people with only a small staff.

 

It was in October of 1987, that Elaine first had a life-changing vision: that the world-wide, and well- known names of the 12 months of the year could become “brand names” for 12 aspects of equitable Golden Rule living, aka the wisdom of the ages.

 

“Imagine what our country will be like when these monthly unifying action themes become celebrated as “holi-months” and become better known than Coca Cola? Imagine when March is celebrated nationally as the month to RESOLVE CONFLICTS?” – Elaine Parke

 

By 1994, Elaine Parke had successfully built and piloted a multimedia model in Somerset, PA. There, with university sponsored research, residents reported that because they simultaneously saw and heard the monthly messages throughout the community, they felt more cared about and connected to one another.

 

In May, 1999, her model was funded by Blue Cross to help what was then one of the worst school districts in Pennsylvania. After just 18 months, the success of the habits’ positive influence on students earned Pennsylvania’s Violence-Free Youth Governor’s Award. Then Governor and Mrs. Tom Ridge became Honorary Chairpersons.

 

In 2001, Elaine’s first book, “Join the Golden Rule Revolution - Practice One Habit Each month of the Year,” (now out of print) was published. After a 60-city Waldenbooks publicity and speaking tour, the first edition sold out.

 

In 2006-07, with support from Rotary International Elaine was sent to post-genocide Rwanda to train educators. 12 Caring Habits Rwanda is helping prevent future genocides by promoting peace among Rwanda’s youth. She was awarded a Paul Harris fellow and a Commendation by the Republic of Rwanda and the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.

 

In 2013, Elaine moved from Pennsylvania to Berkeley Springs, WV. There a new community-wide model successfully united schools and more than 65 business and organizational “Ambassadors” around the monthly message habits. Once again successful survey results among the population of 18,000, after less than two years, replicated the results in Somerset, PA – nearly twenty years earlier. The annual implementation cost per person was less than 87 cents.

 

Today, Elaine Parke is a proud member of the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Friends Board of Directors. She is also working with peers, partners and potential liaisons, posting, blogging and speaking out. With this book, The Habits of Unity, her goal is to more quickly expand the potential for the monthly habits model to become a unifying counterforce to the dis-eased divisiveness and selfish individualism that is ruining life for all in America.

 

Her life’s motto is “Only together will we heal the country we all share.”