Alexanne Stone

Helping people experience their very best in personal growth and professional development is my greatest joy!

I cut my teeth selling Apple computers in the early days in Silicon Valley. There was no product training, and barely anyone had heard of Apple computers. Those in the know greeted the name with a guffaw! I still run into people who remember me as the person who sold their company an Apple.

For 20 years I climbed the corporate sales ladder—in a man’s world—all the way to vice president of international sales for a software firm in Santa Clara. On the way up, I became a certified Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) trainer. NLP is simply the study of the language of your mind and the minds of others. It lets you listen via verbal and non-verbal language in to what’s underneath what a prospect or customer says, throwing open relationship doors and exploding sales.

I left Silicon Valley for Grand Rapids, Michigan to spend the final years of their lives with both my parents. While there, I was the executive director of a non-profit under the Office of the Surgeon General and Homeland Security. One or the most meaningful jobs of my life, medical professionals were trained to respond quickly and effectively to emergencies like 9/11, Katrina and school shootings.

I’ve been living in Reno, the Biggest Little City In The World, with my husband and two rescued cats for the past eight years. I loved college, where I became a dancing, Spanish-speaking engineer who paints. And art has remained my favorite hobby, today in the form of knitting and crocheting, tangling with Zentangle™, and playing with colored pencil, charcoal, and acrylics. I’m also an expert at “Moulage,” or blood, guts, and gore makeup; it’s an outlet for expressing my dark side.

I served our country in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam war. They promised me everything, gave me a typewriter, and sent me to Guam! There, I was decorated for my work during the fall of Saigon in 1975. Before leaving the Air Force, I had the privilege of painting an 11′ x 9′ mural for the press room to honor the “Female Introductory Pilot Program”. Women would finally be allowed to pilot airplanes in the Air Force – cargo planes. How far we have come – women were finally able to pilot jets in 1993!

When people ask me about the things I’ve done, my life experiences, I tell them that I’m “living all my past lives out loud now,” here in this lifetime! Someone recently asked me if there’s anything I cannot do. I said that my final frontier is to ride a horse. I know one is waiting for me on this summer’s horizon.