Nancy Maresh, Founder and Wizard Emeritus

Nancy Maresh spent her younger years preparing for the US Olympics in ski racing. That laser-like focus put her on the Ski Team at University of Colorado where she studied art. A career-ending injury doused the flames of that dream and she spent years recovering in a spiritual setting in the back woods of Vermont.

When she was ready to fully engage with the world, Maresh attended an Accelerate Learning Business school that blew apart her ideas about traditional education. She was exposed to a novel way for learning accounting, where colored pieces of paper linked function (dollars for cash were written on green paper) to placement building rudimentary financial statements. The movement required to build transactions into statements satisfied her physical nature and Maresh experienced a breakthrough in her own personal learning.

This “Aha!” moment proved so potent, she spent the next 12 years helping to liberate others’ learning, confidence and utilization of financial literacy.

Nancy co-created a daylong seminar called The Accounting Game™ that revolutionized how financial concepts would be taught and used. The basic premise acknowledged that many adults feel stupid about accounting and as was reported to her later, executives at leading companies reported they’d been “faking it” with no real grasp of financial concepts or “the big picture” through their entire careers. While her first corporate client was the Executive School of 3M, over the years she saw many organizations where leaders expressed great relief for finally seeing how all the statements and functions fit together.

The Accounting Game™ both circumvented all the negative feelings that would normally block learning and further, provided a framework for learning in which all the detail could be held and remembered. In time, the program formed the backbone of a new company, Educational Discoveries, Inc. where additional and more advanced versions of the curriculum were developed.

Today, Coastal Technologies owns and offers The Accounting Game™. But, the incredible inroads made by this program have provided a strong foundation for Brains at Work’s methods and deliverables. These insights include:

• Provide frameworks for learning
• Create both safety for and responsibility of the learner
• Ensure opportunities to practice, get hands-on and build mastery
• Create personal meaning and engagement from each learner to the material
• Promote the ongoing learning that will happen after the instruction

In 1998, Nancy Maresh met Judith Blair and after commissioning Blair to create a strategic plan for Maresh’s company, hired Blair to implement it. Today, Brains at Work works with business and government providing a broad array of services.

Judith Blair, Partner and CEO

Judith Blair worked her way through college and grad school, expecting to teach Secondary Speech and English. But a whole new career paths opened up: 10 years in Human Resources, 5 years in Finance, 60 business development clients, exciting years in Community Development and several amazing opportunities in entertainment and the arts. Each phase contributed to the “edutainment” orientation of Brains at Work.

Blair says most people are interested in the show business aspect, so let’s get that part out of the way. Co-Founder and lead singer for first women’s rock band, Raw Honey. Stand-up comedian with Marilyn Martinez; Martinez and Blair. Lived and work at Hollywood’s premiere wild animal training company and studio; Africa USA. She has worked as a record producer, playwright, stage director and actor.

Judith is particularly proud of her working managing a community-based strategic planning process for Oakland, CA. Her non-profit, Oakland-Sharing the Vision, organized 2,000 volunteers for an extensive effort tackling issues and the future for Education, Health, Safe Neighborhoods, Economic Development, Culture and the Arts. Blair’s efforts won for Oakland the prestigious All America Cities Award.

Once she joined Nancy Maresh, Blair worked on many significant projects (Bobcat Ingersoll Rand, EPA and many others) and helped Brains at Work make the transition from instruction delivered live to E Learning. Today, the company specializes in optimizing Blended Solutions where both self-paced instruction and group events (classroom, webinars, meetings) are combined for optimal effect.

Both women are accomplished writers. Their book, Nine Points of Contact: Tapping the Multiple Intelligences for Classroom Instruction, Web-based Training and E Commerce is self-published. Nancy wrote the opening chapter of ASTD’s Fieldbook and Judith writes for newsletters and professional journals.