LaughBox

• MA in Japanese Linguistics, University of Hawaii
• Graduate of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Clown College

• Taught Clowning at the famous New York 92nd Street Y
• Clown Professor at NYC College New School
• Hula Dancer at NYC Museum of Natural History
• Margaret Mead's 75th birthday entertainment!

• Worked for IBM in NYC as a Marketing Representative
• Worked for IBM in NYC as a Marketing RepresentativeIn 1982 founded ComputerEase,
• In 1982 founded ComputerEase, a NYC computer training firmAuthored 6 computer books
• Authored 6 computer books including: Excel for Treasury Managers,Cash Management Templates and Excel Macros.
• Cash Management Templates and Excel Macros.

• Linda is a keynote speaker, CLL, Certified Laughter Leader,
• Linda is a keynote speaker, CLL, Certified Laughter Leader,
• Linda is a keynote speaker, CLL, Certified Laughter Leader, team building
• Linda is a keynote speaker, CLL, Certified Laughter Leader, team building
• facilitator, and ice-breaker games innovator.Linda is a seasoned professional at helping people drop their social facade
• Linda is a seasoned professional at helping people drop their social facade and have lots of good ol' fashioned FUN! 

Did you hear about the stand-up comedian from Canada?  It’s no joke…she’s on this episode of Laughbox!  Sit back, plug in and listen as we talk to Pam Wener.  A Laughter Leader and longtime member of AATH, Pam decided a few years ago to try her hand at stand-up comedy.  In this interview, she shares what she does, how she does it and how she’s working to make a difference for those around her.

Connect with Pam on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/pam.wener?fref=ts

Who knows how to hula hoop and also has survived a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)?  Ann Zuccardy THAT’S WHO!  Ann shares her story on this week’s episode on how she became an “accidental neuroscientist” as she looked for answers on how to deal with the issues that arose after she slipped in the tub, busted her noggin’, and started having some issues.  She’s fun, funny and has never taken a bad picture in her life – you won’t want to miss this episode!  Listen in and put some new tools in your toolbox!More on Ann

More on Ann

Sing the ingenuity she discovered after a traumatic brain injury, along with three decades as a corporate communicator, business owner, social media expert, and teacher, Ann Zuccardy challenges
conventional ideas about intelligence, self care, and creativity.

Ann’s two TEDx talks How a Brain Injury Made Me Smarter and How Being Unsafe Makes You Smarter and numerous keynote addresses in business, academia, and professional organizations not only inspire personal growth, but open the door for greater productivity, innovation, and teamwork.

Look out…up ahead…A DETOUR! This week, on Laughbox, I have the great pleasure of talking with Amy Oestreicher. She’s funny, she’s talented, and she knows about the detours in life. She shares her story and how she’s learned to shift mindset and be more resilient. I think you’ll enjoy the interview…she’s VERY high energy!

A little more on Amy…

Amy Oestreicher is a PTSD peer-to-peer specialist, artist, author, writer for The Huffington Post, speaker for TEDx and RAINN, health advocate, award-winning actress, and playwright. As a survivor and “thriver” of multiple traumas, Amy eagerly shares the gifts of life’s “beautiful detours” her educational programming, writing, mixed media art, performance and inspirational speaking.  Amy has headlined international conferences on leadership, entrepreneurship, women’s rights, mental health, disability, creativity, and domestic violence prevention. She is a SheSource Expert, a “Top Mental Health” writer for Medium, and a regular lifestyle, wellness, and arts contributor for over 70 notable online and print publications, and her story has appeared on NBC’s TODAY, CBS, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen Magazine, Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, MSNBC, among others.

To celebrate her own “beautiful detour”, Amy created the #LoveMyDetour campaign, to help others cope in the face of unexpected events.  Her passion for inclusion, equity and amplifying marginalized voices has earned her various honors, including a scholarship from the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor Professionals, the first annual SHERocks Herstory National Performing Artist Honoree, a United Way Community Helper award, and a National Sexual Education Grant honor. To creatively engage student advocacy efforts, Amy developed a trauma-informed program combining mental health education, sexual assault prevention, and Broadway Theatre for college campuses, organizations and conferences.  She has designed a creative curriculum for “Detourist Resiliency,” an outreach program taken to schools, hospitals, and at-risk youth.  She also has launched Detourist peer-led chapters on college campuses, Detourist creative arts workshops, and an online community to creatively fight stigma in society through storytelling. “Detourism” is also the subject of her TEDx Talk and upcoming book, My Beautiful Detour, available December 2017.

As the 2014 Eastern Regional Recipient of Convatec’s Great Comebacks Award and WEGO Health 2016 “Health Activist Hero” Finalist, and WeGO Health Expert, Amy is a passionate voice in the ostomy community, founding the online community Fearless Ostomates, speaking for National and Regional WOCN conferences, and writing for the official print publication of the UOAA.  Her presentations on alternative medicine and patient advocacy and healthcare have also been accepted to international conferences on patient care, internal medicine, medical trauma and therapeutic humor in hospitals.  She has devised workshops for the Transformative Language Arts Network National Conference, the Eating Recovery Foundation, the 40^th Anniversary New England Educational Opportunity Association Milestones Conference, the Annual National Mental Health America Conference,2016 American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, and others. She was the 2016 keynote speaker for the Hawaii Pacific Rim International Conference on Diversity and Disability. and will be the featured keynote speaker at the 2018 International School of Social Work Conference in Ohio.

As a playwright, Amy has received awards and accolades for engaging her audiences in dynamic conversation on trauma’s effects on society, including Women Around Town’s “Women to Celebrate” 2014, BroadwayWorld “Best Theatre Debut,”  Bistro Awards “New York Top Pick, and the “Singular Award” at the Sarasolo Theatre Festival, presented annually for a “performance that is exceptionally uncommon, groundbreaking, original and inventive.” Amy has written, directed and starred in a one-woman musical about her life, Gutless & Grateful, touring theatres, schools, festivals, conventions and organizations since it’s 2012 New York debut.  Gutless & Grateful is currently being licensed to students across the country for academic projects and competitions.  Amy spent Fall of 2015 participating as a playwright and performance artist in the National Musical Theatre Institute at the world-renowned Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where she helped to develop the full-length multimedia ensemble piece, The Greeks Are Trying to Tell Us Something, and was a writer, actress, composer and set designer for “Playwrights and Librettists” – a festival of 27 30-minute plays in five days.  Her original, full-length drama, Imprints, exploring the physical and psychological impact of trauma, premiered at the Producer’s Club in 2016, and is currently in development for a full New York production as Flicker and a Firestarter.  Her short plays have been published by the Eddy Theatre Company and finalists in Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Short Play Festival, as well as NYC Playwright’s Women in the Age of Trump.  Her theatre education essays and monologues have been published in Creative Pedagogy journals, as part of a theatre curriculum for high school students in the Philippines, and as a teaching artist, she is a strong advocate for arts integration and education.

Amy’s collaboration with Beechwood Arts on the immersion salon, “Resilience and the Power of the Human Spirit”, has traveled around the world to health and arts facilities as a public installation, incorporating her monologues, art, writing and recipes to express the life-altering detours and ultimately the invaluable gifts of her resilient journey.  Amy is also an active artist and teacher in the Jewish community, being honored by United Way in 2005 for her music programs at Hollander House, completing artist residencies at Art Kibbutz, and delivering “Hope, Resilience & Biblical Women” keynotes for synagogues and religious schools.  After studying Theatre of the Oppressed in her studies at Hampshire College, she helped to train ACTSmart, a Playback Theatre troupe in Amherst, MA.  She is also a passionate arts education advocate, a successful mixed media visual artist, a continuing education studio arts teacher, and an active member of the League of Professional Theatre Women, League for Advancement of New England Storytellers, Fairfield County Cultural Alliance, Alliance for Jewish Theatre, Theatre Artist Workshop, and several art guilds throughout Connecticut and New York.  

Amy is currently developing a multimedia performance project incorporate her original music compositions with the oral histories of her grandmother, a holocaust survivor with musical director David Brunetti, and developing a new multidisciplinary solo musical based on er second TEDx Talk this year: healing from trauma through the archetypal hero’s journey.  She is also working on a full-length play with music, LEFTOVERS with director and dramaturge Susan Einhorn, based on her life after the surgical ICU.  She is leading mixed media creativity and solo performance workshops to promote creativity as a mindset, an essential survival skill.  Amy also offers creative coaching and consulting services help others navigate their own “life detours,” and prides herself most on ending each night with a gratitude list.

You don’t need to burn incense and meditate to be practice mindfulness…you just need a focus to calm all the crap being flung around in your head!    On this week’s Laughbox, I get to interview mindfulness expert, Nick Mosca, as he shares simple strategies to decrease your stress and live with more mindfulness.

Drawing on over ten years of experience as an educator, Nick Mosca empowers people to align mindfulness practices with their interests, reduce stress, and reclaim their lives.

Nick currently serves as a Mindfulness Coach/English & Public Speaking Teacher at The George Jackson Academy. In this capacity, he offers over 175 staff and underserved youth practical curricula for using personalized mindfulness to enhance their lives. In 2015, The Atlantic featured Nick’s mindfulness-based Selfless Love Act Project that he co-authored for both educators and students at this institution.

Nick also co-hosts on WABC Radio and has presented at Yale University, Squarespace, Columbia University, New York University, Share Fair Nation, The HealthCare Chaplaincy Network, The Milken Scholars Program, and Molloy College. Moreover, Nick’s writing has appeared in Psychology Today and he is the elected Research Chairperson of The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, through which he earned a scholarship for using mindfulness and comedy to advance world peace.

Nick holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University where he won The Billings Prize for inspiring behavioral change through positive humor. During his undergraduate studies, Nick earned a B.A. in English (Magna Cum Laude) from Georgetown University. He is a member of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). 

During his free time, Nick composes music, runs, and plays baseball.

You can get more on Nick and his work here:  http://www.nickmosca.com/

Do you like to LAFF? No one does it like Bob Moss! Bob is a long time member of AATH, a retired educator, and is a man on a mission. That mission is to bring more laughter, smiles, and positivity to everyone around him. We had a great time in this interview where Bob shares some his strategies for being positive but also how practicing something in your head can make all the difference when you’re in the mix actually doing it. He even got me to sing with him! Take a listen and enjoy (and try saying Hubba Jubba a few times….it’s just FUN!).

More on Bob and his book can be found on his Facebook profile. 

She’s an author, she’s an educator, she can leap tall buildings in a single bound….it’s Mary Kay Morrison! Few people have done as much to further the cause of therapeutic humor than Mary Kay. In this episode of Laughbox, Mary Kay shares some insights into the Association and how our Certified Humor Professional Program (which she gave birth to) took shape. Mary Kay is a great friend and has dedicated a great part of her life to AATH (and her husband’s too). Take a listen to this interview with one of our own.

More on Mary Kay:

Mary Kay Morrison, a professional educator, has dedicated her professional and personal life to researching the benefits of humor and play. She has shared her message with groups as diverse as hospice caregivers, education administrators and bank executives. Through her workshops and publications her quest for humor has assisted others to achieve significant positive change in their lives. She is the teacher for the Humor Academy a graduate program offered through AATH (The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor). 

More on Mary Kay can be found on her website at: http://www.questforhumor.com/

Knock knock! Who’s there? Heidi Hanna! And that’s no joke! What a great experience it was to get to share some of Heidi Hanna’s brain this week on Laughbox. I say some because she’s so smart I don’t think I could handle the full Hanna. Heidi shares what’s going on in your brain when you’re stressed and what you can do to calm the monkey on this week’s Laughbox episode. She also shares about her upcoming Global Stress Summit and how you can be a part of this incredible event. Take a listen in, you won’t be disappointed.

More on Heidi….

As an experienced speaker, Dr. Heidi Hanna has been featured at many national and global conferences, including the Fortune Magazine Most Powerful Women in Business Summit, ESPN Women’s Leadership Summit, and the Million Dollar Round Table. She is founder and Chief Energy Officer of Synergy, a consulting company providing brain-based health and performance programs for organizations, the Executive Director of the American Institute of Stress, and a frequent lecturer at Canyon Ranch Resort and Spa in Tucson, Arizona.

Dr. Hanna’s publications include the NY Times bestseller The SHARP Solution: A Brain-Based Approach for Optimal Performance (Wiley, Feb 2013), Stressaholic: 5 Steps to Transform Your Relationship With Stress (Wiley, Jan 2014) and Recharge: 5 Shifts to Energize Your Life (Synergy, 2015).

Dr. Hanna is a National Board Member for Blessings in a Backpack, a Fellow with the American Institute of Stress, and she currently serves as editor of their quarterly publication, Contentment. Recently, Dr. Hanna created The Beyond Funny Project, a non-profit dedicated to providing resources and education related to the benefits of healthy humor.

Dr. Hanna holds a bachelors degree in communications from Penn State University, where she competed on the Big 10 softball team and received academic All-American honors. She holds a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Rollins College and a Ph.D. degree in holistic nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health. Clients have included Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Boeing, Proctor & Gamble, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, ESPN and Starbucks, as well as professional and amateur athletes.

Still need more? Check her out at: https://www.heidihanna.com/

What do you get when you cross a tech savvy entrepreneur with a person that wants to make a difference for others? FRANK CHINDAMO! In this episode of Laughbox, Frank shares about his humor roots and how LaughMD got started and where they want to go. Take a listen in as Frank makes me laugh a LOT!More on Frank…

More on Frank…

Frank created Fun Little Movies in 2003, the first U.S. company to produce comedic films for mobile phones worldwide, and launched the still-running top-deck channel of comedy videos on Sprint phones in 2004. In 2007, he was nominated by Ernst & Young for Entrepreneur of the Year. Frank is LMD’s Founder and Content Curator, and has experience ranging from the Sprint Channel to Babelgum.com, (achieving 1 million subscribers in under two months) to the current Christian content site. Truli.net. FLM produces web video series for big brands including Walmart, Petco and Kingston Technologies.

FLM has been a cover story or featured in Forbes Magazine, the L.A. Times, the NY Times, USA Today, The NY Post, the BBC, Washington Post, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, AdAge, Mashable, CBS and Wired Magazine. FLM has also won over 30 awards for the the videos they have produced, including the Grand Prize at Mobile Content World in Barcelona at the MoFilm awards, given by Kevin Spacey. FLM was also a finalist at the Cannes Film Festival for Best Short Film. In 2010, Frank produced a video for TED with Titanic and Avatar producer Jon Landau. He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities and is currently an Adjunct Professor in Web Video at USC, UCLA and Chapman Universities.

Frank created LaughMD because of the experiences he saw when he was with his family in hospitals. His father suffered from heart attacks and cancer and was in the hospital 17 times. His brother passed away after months in a hospital. And other family members have spent weeks in hospitals. Frank saw that most of the time, patients were doing nothing but watching TV, and the TV channels available to them made them more anxious, aggravated and sicker. There had to be a better way!

Frank received his Film B.F.A. from N.Y.U. and his Screenwriting & Producing M.F.A. from Columbia University.

Want more on LaughMD? Visit their site: http://www.laughmd.com/

Mirthologist and psychologist, Dr. Steve Sultanoff, is the founder of Humor Matters.  He also is the Past-President of AATH and also the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner.  In this episode of Laughbox, he shares his personal strategies for incorporating more humor into your life and how he used humor strategically as a psychotherapist with his patients.  You’ll get some real strategies you can use right away in this episode!  Grab a pen, paper and be prepared!