Lisa Giruzzi, B.A.’83
Transforming Lives
By Carol Olechowski
ithin the next month, you can “move effortlessly toward the life you want to live.” And Lisa Giruzzi’s 31 Days to Transform Your Life: A Daily Action Guide for Increasing Joy, Satisfaction & Fulfillment (Transformational Conversations, 2009) can help you.
In her 20-plus years as a speaker, coach and consultant working with individuals and organizations, “I was seeing a lot of the same things, including a focus on problems, in many different places. To create positive change, you need to focus on your strengths and enhance what’s already working,” Giruzzi emphasizes.
While the guide’s Day 1 exercise, “Question Your Perspective,” should be completed first, “the lessons do not have to be done in order.” Nor must they be completed within one month, adds the author, who recommends that “the ‘Transformational Actions’ you find most valuable” be incorporated “into daily or weekly practices to support your ongoing journey.”
Other 31 Days lessons include “Focus on Your Successes,” “Stop the Blame Game” and “Live It Up!”
At UAlbany, Giruzzi majored in psychology and minored in sociology. She discovered “a lot of different ways to learn,” including an internship at the Capital District Psychiatric Center, where she later worked for two years, and research projects. After graduation, she was employed as a social worker for the Northeast Parent and Child Society and as a child protective caseworker for Schenectady County.
A co-founder of the Creating WE Institute, an organization of “critical thinkers, consultants, coaches and scientists” who address leadership and problem-solving issues in the workplace, Giruzzi also spent three years with an educational consulting company in New York City. Now back in Albany, she heads her own consulting company, Transformational Conversations.
Giruzzi’s newest book, Bringing Out the Best in Your Employees: The Ultimate Guide for Managers and Supervisors for Engaging and Empowering Their Employees, is expected to be released this fall.
Several Capital Region bookstores carry 31 Days to Transform Your Life, which is also available through Giruzzi’s Web site, www.TransformationalConversations.com.
Christopher Robinson M.A.’85, Ph.D.’91, has published Wittgenstein and Political Theory: The View from Somewhere. Robinson says the book is designed for graduate advanced undergraduate students. Getting back to a philosophical way of life is difficult, Robinson says. “There’s no great financial remuneration for this type of work, but there are certain rewards to a reflective life. If nothing else, it’s more humane." Robinson is an assistant professor of political science at Clarkson and is also co-host of North Country Public Radio's “Readers and Writers on the Air.”
