Jeanne Chevalier, Fille du Roi: Her Story (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780997951608)

Lynne's life has been a constant process of embarking on new ventures and enjoying many learning experiences. Although half French Canadian by heritage, she was raised in a non-French speaking home. She went off to college with four years of high school French, but decided to start a new language. Her degree in Russian Studies from Mount Holyoke College led her into teaching and then to graduate school at Rutgers University where she earned a Master's degree in Modern European History. Her love for history, particularly women in history, and for the French and Russian languages was, however, put on the back-burner by a 17-year business career (MBA from University of California at Berkeley) at two very large financial institutions. In the middle of that career, a curious chain of events significantly readjusted the course of her life for the next 20 years when she rather serendipitously fell into the study of creativity. After completing her Ed.D at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she let her passion for the topics of creativity and leadership drive her departure from her banking career toward independent consulting and adjunct teaching positions in local colleges and universities. As part of that consulting practice, Lynne published Breakthrough Creativity: Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents (2001) and The Breakthrough Creativity Profile and Facilitator's Guide (2003, 2012), along with several articles on the topics of creativity and leadership. While still consulting, she spent 5-1/2 years as a senior researcher at Harvard Business School, where she co-authored multiple cases and articles on critical leadership challenges. Continuing to pursue more writing projects, she helped a dear friend write and publish his memoir You Can't Win If You Don't Play (2012). Another set of unexpected occurrences led her to start on a different path while still working as a consultant. For over a decade now, she has been researching the history of her eighth great grandmother. The journey to uncover her ancestor's story has caused Lynne to come almost full circle back to her French Canadian roots and her love of history, although now more enriched by life's twists and turns. And after teaching, writing and talking about creativity for so many years and urging others to unleash their creative talents, she has now begun to access in depth all of her own talents as a dedicated writer of non-fiction.