Heather Gallien
and Idée-Force:
Hickenlooper Lauds Agency’s Contributions to Nonprofits and Arts
Thirty-six-year-old Heather Gallien, founder and owner of Idée-Force (Idée-force is French for “powerful idea”), overcame a double-whammy challenge when launching, then successfully building, her advertising and marketing agency in 2002. First, she is a young woman in a business world where men still outnumber women—then, she launched shortly after 9/11. “My first challenge was overcoming the obstacles of being a female leader,” she says. “As a young woman CEO, I’ve periodically faced age and gender discrimination, even in these times.
“Although marketing is an industry that generally supports women, it has sometimes been a struggle to build credibility and a solid reputation with key client decision makers,” she says. “So my firm attained the Small Business Administration 8(a) Certification, which helps lend credibility to small companies with minority or women owners and affords those companies more opportunities to bid on government contracts.”
Idée-Force, a woman-owned, full-service advertising agency offering brand strategy, identity, advertising, design, web development and direct marketing, couldn’t have launched during a more challenging time. Gallien, just thirty-two-years-old when she opened Idée-Force’s doors, left a comfortable corporate position to build her dream business during one of the worst economic climates in U.S. history. “My second challenge was starting the business at the time I did, in 2002 when the country was still reeling from the dotcom bust and 9/11. This was not the best time to start an advertising agency, and we had no working capital outside of our personal savings. We were determined and persistent to succeed, and we persevered through the first couple of years and now enjoy profitability.”
Profitability isn’t, however, Idée-Force’s only mission —nonprofits and the arts enjoy the expertise and marketing transformations Idée-Force produces as much as the agency’s corporate clients. So much so, that Gallien’s won accolades for her dedication and work in these sectors, while developing a regional reputation for dedication to Colorado’s arts and cultural climate.
Her devotion to Colorado’s arts and cultural com­munities is evidenced in her hands-on assistance to many arts organizations. Nonprofits continue to benefit from over $100,000 in Idée-Force’s pro bono services—organizations like ProjectWISE, CultureHaus, Denver’s Road Home: The 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness, and the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, to name but a few. “”Our most recent project was with ProjectWise,” says Gallien, “an organization dedicated to empowering low income women. They were the winner of our 2006 Extreme Marketing Makeover for non-profits. They are receiving an entire set of new marketing tools that will help propel their organization to the next level.
“But for several years, we have also worked closely and donated tens of thousands of dollars in services to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival,” she adds. “This is our way of supporting the people, the arts and the culture of Colorado. It is part of our agency’s credo: To ensure that nonprofit organizations have the most inspiring, creative and powerful marketing possible so that they can continue to thrive and provide access to social services and to the arts for Coloradoans.
“The thing is, we see this work as being much larger than the regional impact it has,” Gallien adds. “We feel that by creating successful brand images and marketing strategies for cultural nonprofits, we help them shine and attract more visitors, attendees and members. In this way, we believe we support Colorado’s economy. We help showcase organizations in order to make our state a more attractive life, work and tourism destination. Our efforts not only help our nonprofit clients improve the lives of people around the nation, but we increase the ‘brand value’ of Colorado so that it shines more brightly on a national level.”
That beyond-our-neighborhood vision of how her business could affect the larger world caught Mayor John Hickenlooper’s eye. Hickenlooper stated in a February 2006 press release, “The health of Denver’s nonprofit sector is key to our community’s ultimate success ... we hope Idée-Force’s generously donated marketing services will increase nonprofits’ success.”
Hickenlooper was referring specifically to Gallien’s creation of Denver’s Annual Extreme Marketing Makeover for Nonprofits. Idée-Force was applauded by the City of Denver for launching this gift to the non-profit community. Each January, the firm selects one nonprofit to receive, at no charge, a new suite of professional marketing materials valued at over $22,000.
In addition to launching and then leading a growing business, Gallien is a well-regarded speaker and educator, and conducts a pro bono workshop called Marketing and Branding for Nonprofits, which offers a toolbox of expertise, insights and tips to nonprofit marketers and fundraisers.
Moreover, The Junior Achievement selected Heather Gallien as a panelist for their Business Week Entrepreneurial Summit in June 2005, where she spoke on a panel with three Colorado business owners and encouraged young students about how they could build their own businesses. She routinely extends her expertise in many areas of her business—long term vision, growth plans, operations, personnel management, business development, marketing strategy and client relationship management—to countless colleagues, professional and academic organizations, community associations and students—all in the effort to have some of the Idée-Force success and vision permeate the community at large. “All of these efforts somehow work back to help feed the Idée-Force core business,” she says. “Always, the experience is so positive, it seems that we are the benefactors, rather than the other way around.”
Gallien is also an amateur jazz vocalist, who can be found on various private and public stages, belting out Etta James’ “At Last,” or any number of other classic tunes. If that were not enough, she is a yellow belt in Tae Kwan Do (“I love the focus, discipline and confidence that can be developed through martial arts, and because I’m also determined to reach my goals—I plan to continue to black belt status!,” she says.) And Gallien’s a risk-taking snowboarder, thinking nothing of riding fast and catching some air on the slopes.
All of which, given Gallien’s penchant for independent avenues, is not a bit surprising.

Jenifer Madson
Author: A Financial Minute: From Money Madness to Financial Freedom One Minute at a Time—and founder of Wealth Journeys
Jenifer Madson’s been called “the Dear Abby of finance” for a variety of reasons, but probably mostly because she brings a comfortable—yet powerful—approach to what can often be a neglected and difficult topic: finances. Her new book, A Financial Minute: From Money Madness to Financial Freedom One Minute at a Time “soft-launched” in spring 2006 (official launch is August, 2006) and she’s spent decades coaching and advising individuals and corporations on how to relate to money so that it doesn’t rule the person, but it grows and enhances people’s lives. “Wealth Journeys provides programs and products designed to improve how people relate to money, from a psychological and technical perspective,” says Madson.
“I have been privileged to have worked with people of very high stature in the world,” she adds. “They have taught me that no matter how much money you have, without knowing what you want it to mean in your life, you can still be lost. So our mission is to provide people the world over with the resources they need to change their mind about money, to better support who they are and what they love.”
Lofty goals that Madson routinely shares—pro bono—with any number of Front Range organizations and associations that service clients who may not have access to conventional financial services and counsel. Though Jenifer’s expertise has been called upon by: Aegon International, Price Waterhouse Coopers, the U.S. Government, and the New York Stock Exchange, to name a few, she routinely donates her time and expertise to organizations like Micro Business Development, a non-profit that services entrepreneurs who may not have conventional financial tools, and Mi Casa Women’s Resource Center. In March 2006, she was appointed to Micro Business Development’s Board of Directors and on August 10, she will host a fundraiser for Micro Business Development (visit www.afinancialminute.com for further information).
Madson comes by her ability to communicate about money and her experience at handling same honestly. With a B.S. in Communications from the University of South Carolina, her financial services, speaking engagements, writing spans fifteen years of coaching people about money—and how to attract it. As a franchise owner for a national company, Jenifer built multi-million dollar territories and led award-winning branch offices for a national financial services firm. She says that it all works so well because of her own ability to psychologically “let go” of outcome, while keeping her eye on the prize. “I bring a very high level of certainty to situations where I’m asked to lead,” she says. “I am not attached to the ego place of having to come with all the answers; rather, I am confident that I either know the answer or know where to get it. I am very collaborative, and not attached to having to do things a certain way, just attached to the outcome of getting the job done.”
She is also dedicated to relationships and considers loyalty as a key ingredient to her—and her clients’—continued success. “I don’t take relationships lightly, so whether I’m involved with personally or professionally, if we’ve decided to be partners, I hold up my end of the bargain, whatever that means. The best and worst of me is my obsessive nature. For good or bad, when I get behind something I feel very passionate about, I will let it run me from the wee hours of the morning until late into the night. I can be counted on to show up, to be energized, and to be solution mode, ninety-nine percent of the time.
“I also challenge everything that people say can’t be done,” she adds. “Being an entrepreneur allows me to be free to explore and manifest all the wonderfully creative things that go on in my head about how to improve the world.
And Madson has big plans to keep improving the worlds of those she works with, her enthusiasm barely containable. “I want to provide people the world over with the resources they need to change their mind about money, to better support who they are and what they love,” she says. “To that end, Wealth Journeys will be developing software and training programs that teach coaching models to non-profits, corporations and communities, to help these entities develop peer networks for the sake of sustainable growth. We will partner with local and national banks to support the message of financial literacy by teaching the three-step program contained in A Financial Minute to any and all who are interested in improving how they relate to money. By the end of 2008, we will have added three more books to the Financial Minute series, A Financial Minute for Singles, A Financial Minute for Couples, and A Financial Minute for Young Adults. We will also start a new division in 2007 to teach sales practices that speak to more collaborative relationships. We will establish Wealth Journeys and my personal work as a financial success coach as the premier resource for financial transformation. Along the way, we will promote ways to give of one’s time, talents and “tens”—encouraging people to donate what they can in order to give back to the communities that support them.”
In April 2006, Jenifer won a Women of Achievement Award bestowed upon her by the Denver Chapter of the Association in Communications. She is also a regular columnist for Colorado & Company Magazine, where her devoted readership turns to her for continued, dependable—and doable—financial advice and guidance.

Marge Goodyear & Andrea Wieland
International Center for Performance & Health (ICPH)
Don’t ask Marge Goodyear, co-founder of the International Center for Performance & Health (ICPH), to speak about disabilities or impairments. Those are subjects she professes to know little about. A physician assistant by training, Goodyear, born without a right hand and the youngest of six South Carolina children, lives by a credo that is all about humor, a little hubris and a whole lot of unmitigated happiness she’s found in life. And that’s all before launching her (with business partner, Andrea Wieland’s) state-of-the-art human performance health facility. “Those five older siblings basically taught me to do everything: tennis, golf, horseback riding—they never let me get away with feeling sorry for myself,” she says.
“I knew nothing except that I could achieve whatever I put my mind to,” she adds, “so, for example, in college I took ‘Advanced Aid’ and was told—in front of the class—that the instructor would help me figure out how to tie a knot. I informed her that I’d been tying my own shoes since I was 5-years-old and could tie a knot without her help. As a health-care provider, people often thought I couldn’t start IVs, draw blood, intubate or even do CPR.
“I did.”
Business partner Andrea Wieland ain’t no stranger to super-achieving either. Member of the U.S National Field Hockey Team for thirteen years, a 1996 Olympian with an MBA and a Ph.D., Wieland is also very much about living larger than whatever current circumstances present themselves. “Yes, I competed in the Olympics,” she says, “but what people don’t often know is that I was cut eight times before finally making the U.S. Olympic Field Hockey team. When I say ‘cut,’ it means that I was not selected for important international tours or tournaments and I had to stay home and train on my own.
“Let’s just say that training on your own as a goalie is not exactly easy,” she adds. “Even after the Olympics, I thought, ‘Well, at least I have arrived and now I can have the U.S. team experience that I have dreamed about and intended to have.’ But—I was cut from the team five more times after that. Wow—so perhaps persistence may have then turned into bull-headedness. My mother will tell you that I do not take ‘no’ for an answer if I really want something.
“When I believe in something strongly enough, it’s almost as if it’s not a choice.”
Which is part of the glue that binds these two overachievers together. Frustrated with a less-then-stellar U.S. healthcare system—or lack thereof—what Goodyear calls, “the business of being sick,” Wieland and Goodyear set out to create a business built around pro-actively building and sustaining optimal health. “As a working EMT and physician assistant,” says Goodyear, “I witnessed, on a daily basis, how the current system works against building healthy people. We need to create, from the ground up, an integrated, multidisciplinary avenue that engages people to adopt and then sustain healthy living. We call it a ‘performance-health balance.’ That’s what the International Center for Performance & Health is all about.”
Wieland puts it another way. “We are a multidisciplinary team of human performance and health providers who team with clients to design a program to reach and sustain their unique performance-health balance,” she says. “We keep people in their sporting, business, family and career games for the long run. We are most similar to the Center for Creative Leadership and the Olympic Training Center under one roof. We help corporate athletes perform in more balanced ways and help athletes improve their leadership, as well as performance on the field, in the classroom, in with their familes. Too many overachievers perform at cost to their health or their health interferes with their performance.”
Like Wieland, Goodyear comes from a distinguished athletic and leadership-driven background. She attended the National Outdoor Leadership School in Kenya, Africa, where she led groups of attendees and was chosen to lead a self-contained, ten-day hike through the Rift Valley, arriving without incident at the end. As a ten-year-old child, she created a job for herself in order to ride prize horses. “I figured out that by mucking stalls, training other people’s horses, and showing them at horse shows, I could ride a lot of really wonderful horses,” she says.
Goodyear went on to win multiple horse show championships, take junior tennis tournaments, and thrive on varsity soccer, tennis and fencing teams.
Likewise, Wieland, in addition to being an Olympic athlete, built a best Iowa MBA students team that ended up a finalist in the Big Ten Conference Business School Case Competition. She also built The Winner’s Circle Camps, where she recruited the best national team players and coaches to conduct team building and leadership skills in addition to the teaching of field hockey skills and strategies. She also incorporated Winning Systems, Inc., a leadership and team building consultancy where she taught and coached business leaders, coaches and athletes how to create systems to win more.
But these women have, despite their backgrounds, only just begun with the launch of the International Center for Performance & Health. “We’re working with the Center for Women’s Health Research and the Health and Wellness Committee for the Denver Metro Sports Commission—and they are working to bring the 2018 Winter Olympics to Colorado,” says Wieland. “It is very exciting because the Denver Metro Sports Commission has a vision of positioning Denver as the world-renown city for health and wellness. ICPH has the opportunity to significantly contribute to the realization of this vision, and we have incorporated the vision of our exercise physiologist, Corey Hart, to position Denver as the world-renowned city for endurance athletes.”
Presently, ICPH offers the full-spectrum of health and performance care, using a team approach, including experts and services involving: sports and family medicine, performance psychology, phys­ical therapy, executive coaching, exercise physiology, nutrition, acupuncture, medical massage therapy and group exercise such as spinning and yoga classes.
“We plan to grow the Denver community’s commitment to have the best training, testing, coaching and events for endurance athletes,” she adds, “and those who want to live the accelerated experience of a superior performer, whether that be in business, family, artistic or athletic performance.” There’s little doubt that she and Goodyear—and the International Center for Performance & Health—will achieve exactly that.

Kathleen Quinn Votaw
TalenTrust
Forget that Kathleen Quinn Votaw is founder of the wildly successful TalenTrust, a talent acquisition firm that aligns with companies with key executives for accelerated growth—or that she is a working mother and married to her high school sweetheart. Votaw’s unbridled success prior to launching TalenTrust, made her a member of the Fortune 500 Olsten Corporation’s company’s: Presidents Club and Chairmen’s Club—several years running.
Moreover, Votaw once worked with CDI Corporation, the Today’s Staffing Division, a $1.5 billion staffing firm, where she managed the entire West coast region. While at CDI Corporation, she grew the company’s Today’s Staffing Division by fifty percent, including growing accounts like Great West Life into a $20+ million account.
If all that accomplishment—while still in her 20s and 30s—weren’t enough, Votaw survived cancer. “On October 24, 2000, we joyfully welcomed our son, John, into our family,” says Votaw. “Three days later, I was rushed to the hospital, unable to breathe. First they diagnosed me with HELLP Syndrome, something that affects five to ten percent of pregnant women. Then they discovered a cancerous nodule on my thyroid.
“Lucky for me, thyroid cancer is one of the most treatable forms of cancer, and thanks to good treatment, I’m again healthy,” she adds. “But facing a health crisis definitely changed my perspective. It convinced me that I needed to ‘stop marching to a corporate drummer’ and make more time for the people and things that really matter.”
The youngest of five of an East coast Irish immigrant family, Kathleen is known to stop her day, lunch with would-be employee candidates, mentor them through their career ups and downs, and ultimately place those candidates in positions beyond the candidates’ initial visions. Furthermore, Fortune 500 companies depend upon her to build their staffs—work that began as a way to support herself in college and which today serves as a supremely gratifying and successful work life. “The individuals that I have developed along the way and the relationships that I’ve developed are my proudest professional achievements,” says Votaw. “One of my (corporate) clients today was an individual I hired over fifteen years ago as a sales representative. Today he is president of a business unit for a very successful firm in Massachusetts. He sent me a note on the back of his business card when he was promoted to president that says, ‘You deserve a lot of the credit for where I am today.’ Let me just say that that means more to me than any other individual achievement.”
Votaw enjoyed what she describes as a “Norman Rockwell” childhood, growing up in a large, loving family in West Hartford, Connecticut. Kathleen met her future husband, Andy Votaw, when she was only fourteen-years-old. They started dating when she was seventeen, and married seven years later. While they knew they wanted to have children, they spent the first nine years of their marriage as a “DINK” (double income, no kids) couple, building their careers, and then a beautiful mountain home in Conifer, where they could enjoy the great outdoors.
In 2003, Kathleen launched TalenTrust, which Votaw envisioned as much more than a talent acquisition firm. She and her staff work to attract key talent, and to help clients integrate that talent acquisition into companies’ overall strategic plan and vision. “Talent acquisition and fit is about relationships, not transactions,” says Votaw. “It is how TalenTrust separates itself from the pack—and why we enjoy such success. After eighteen years in the executive search industry, I figured out that talent search and placement is not about numbers. I walked away from a high-level position in a $1.5 billion company to launch the now successful and respected TalenTrust firm—and I have absolutely no regrets. We expect to enjoy our best year yet, with projected double growth in 2006 (from 2005).”
Which won’t surprise anyone who is familiar with Votaw’s dedicated community and business involvement. Kathleen presently serves as an active board member of Women Business Executives and the Association for Corporate Growth, where she was a featured speaker at the 2006 4th Annual Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth, Women in Corporate Growth Breakfast, and she is a contributing columnist to the Denver Business Journal.
Perhaps what truly separates Votaw out from the talent acquisition business, though, is that there is no CEO along the Front Range with a larger heart, a more driven compassion for people, and an astute businesswoman’s savvy than Kathleen. “I meet all the time with CEOs and other executives who, though there may not be an obvious placement on my radar, I can still benefit—as can they—from the interaction.
“I don’t believe that there has to be an agenda for helping someone with their career,” she adds. “The truth is that giving my time inevitably comes back to help TalenTrust in some fashion. Often, it is simply that I meet wonderful people that, were I not in the position I’m in, I’d never have the opportunity to meet.”
In addition to mentoring people across the Front Range in their professional careers and ambitions, Votaw won a Women of Achievement Award from the Denver Chapter of the Association of Women in Communications in April 2006. She is also an amateur vocalist and a sought-after professional speaker. “We get whatever it is that we put out there,” says Votaw. “I’m very fortunate. TalenTrust just keeps reaping all the awards of those efforts.”