Meet Joni

Joni is living her dream!

As a young teenager, Joni wrote in her journal that when she grew up, she wanted to be a motivational speaker and a Solid Gold Dancer.

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Life took her on a slightly different—and much longer—route to get there.

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Joni became a registered nurse and has spent more than 30 years caring for, teaching, and encouraging people through all kinds of life and health challenges. Her nursing career has included emergency care, outpatient surgery, clinical education, medical-surgical nursing, cardiovascular nursing, and cardiac rehabilitation.

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For nine years, she also served as the supervisor of a hospital-based medical fitness facility, where she managed staff, programming, and business operations while developing and delivering health and wellness programs throughout the hospital and community.

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But that teenage dream never completely went away.

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In 2006, Joni discovered Zumba and fell in love with the combination of movement, music, energy, and connection. She became a certified Zumba instructor and began teaching classes and leading events locally and internationally. Twenty years later, she is still bringing people together through movement, laughter, and community.

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Solid Gold Dancer dream? Close enough. Check!

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Then another part of the dream began taking shape.

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In 2020, Joni became a Board-Certified Nurse Coach and began coaching people one-on-one—from cancer patients and cardiac rehabilitation graduates to people from all walks of life navigating stress, change, and overwhelm.

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Through that work, she became increasingly interested in a question that now sits at the heart of what she teaches:

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Why can we know what would help us—and still struggle to access it when we're stressed or overwhelmed?

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In 2021, Joni began bringing that work to larger audiences, helping people understand the body-brain connection and giving them practical tools to regulate stress, widen perspective, and respond more intentionally. Today, she is a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator who has shared her work with healthcare professionals, organizations, universities, schools, and communities.

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Motivational Speaker dream? Check!

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Along the way, Joni developed the Self-Coaching Circle®, a practical framework for helping people recognize what's happening within them, settle physiological activation, access what they already know, and move from automatic reaction toward intentional choice.

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Her curiosity about why those tools work—and why they can sometimes be so difficult to access under pressure—eventually led her to the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her Master of Applied Positive Psychology in 2026.

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Today, Joni's work brings together more than three decades of nursing with coaching, positive psychology, nervous-system regulation, strengths, movement, and the science of human flourishing.

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And she's still living all of it—working in clinical nursing, coaching individuals, speaking and teaching, and yes, still dancing.

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Outside of work, Joni lives in Stillwater with her husband of more than 35 years. They have three grown children, and one of her favorite roles yet is being “Mimi” to her grandson.

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Turns out that teenage girl with the journal had a pretty good idea of where she was headed.