BERKELEY SPRINGS, WV, November 05, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Linda Alison D. Carter has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Management Systems Analyst
Alison Carter began her professional career in 1968 as a Management Systems Analyst at Hartford Insurance Company. She was a member of an innovative creative team hired to implement newly developed management systems theories to solve corporate problems and design new programs for the CEO and top executives. The Harvard professor, who developed early concepts of management systems and who insisted on a "culture of excellence" was her supervisor, trainer, and mentor.
Carter developed office systems that saved time and reduced costs in processing insurance policies. She was acknowledged for creating unique functional insurance forms designs, and was a key figure in designing the system to implement new no-fault insurance laws nationwide.
She is grateful that her boss coached her to break glass ceilings for women as an internal consultant, problem solver, and system developer. As part of busting stereotypes that limited women to typing others' dictations and "fetching coffee", he once threatened to "fire her on the spot" if he ever caught her even touching a typewriter!
Healing Our Environment, Saving a Town
Following her heart, she next applied her analytic, creative, and management skills in working to improve our environment. 1969 to 1970 at Buchart Horn Consulting Engineers, Carter was Administrative Assistant to Dr Brandt, Chief of Environmental Services, and served as Administrator for a Federal grant to study and abate acid mine drainage in the Loyalhanna Creek watershed in Westmoreland County, PA.
Walking the river to study the deadly red water pollution sources and collect water samples, she discovered a burning mine shaft that tunneled under the City of Latrobe. She called local authorities together to inform them of the fire hazards of using open mine shafts as trash dumps. Her efforts resulted in hazardous mines being shut down and sealed, and stopped mine fires that could have undermined the town of Latrobe, PA. This saved Latrobe from the fate of the town of Centralia, PA that was destroyed by underground mine trash fires that are still burning.
Another major contribution included her development of unique ways to use maps of soil types to identify and aid in abatement of acid mine drainage damage to river banks and ground soils.
70 to 71 Sales Manager, Richards Company –Door to door encyclopedia sales
72-75 Maryland Casualty Company – Management Systems Analyst
Personal Growth
Career change occurred again when emotional pain led to an exploration of herself using the new Transactional Analysis and Gestalt mental health therapies. Alison was fortunate to do her personal work with therapists - Valerie Lankford, Eric Burn's protégé; Jacqui Schiff and Harry Rose, who developed re-parenting therapy modalities; and George Kandle, Fritz Perls' protégé. With loving empowering interventions, these groundbreaking counselors, helped her to heal deep emotional wounds.
1977-1979 Carter completed intensive training in Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Therapy.
Enthused by the power of these techniques to help people help themselves, and building on 13 years of night school and a few college semesters, Alison returned to Towson State University to complete 36 credits in one year of full time study. In 1976, she graduated Magnum Cum Laude, earning a major in psychology and a minor in urban planning. Armed only with this basic degree, her systems background, experience with grants, creativity, and the power of her own transformation, she entered the field of mental health at a level far above where a basic bachelor's degree would normally allow.
Vocational Evaluator, Vocational Services Program,
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore
1976-78, she left her mark again with innovations in Vocational Rehabilitation, humanizing the process, changing vocational evaluations that were culturally biased, and streamlining cumbersome reports, while at the same time, emphasizing personalization. With her systems background and constant attention to updating and improving whatever is around her, Carter observes her own predictable behavior, laughs, and says, "I couldn't help myself."
Miracle Healing – Intro to Energy Healing
In 1977, during a private session with energy healing practitioner Janet McGuigan, Alison was stunned when she experienced a medically documented instantaneous miraculous healing of a torn cartilage in her left knee. Alison then studied with McGuigan, a psychiatric nurse, Healing Touch Practitioner and Cherokee Lineage Shaman. McGuigan's energy work was researched intensively, her unusual brain waves documented, and she was a key person Delores Krieger worked with to develop Therapeutic Touch. McGuigan taught energy healing to doctors and medical staff, and Alison became her assistant in these workshops and trainings.
Two Different Worlds: In the daytime work world, Alison continued her successful careers in government and corporate work. At night and on weekends, she followed her heart exploring the mysteries of life, spirituality, and energy healing.
Healing Service Work
Alison was asked to teach Energy Healing classes at the Avante Garde Bookstore in Towson Maryland. With a Circle of her students, she founded and served on the Board of the Abaton Healing Center. From 1977 to 1994, for seventeen years, she taught spiritual development classes, offered free Monday night guided meditations, and facilitated alternative energy healing.
Additionally, Alison taught stress management in Baltimore County Adult Education Programs.
She served on the Board of the Koinonia Foundation, an alternative community dedicated to developing and living life styles that honor nature and spiritual growth. Koinonia became a grants foundation that gave supportive grants to grassroots non-profits with similar goals.
Walking the Talk – Solar Home
In 1979, Alison built an energy efficient home in Sparks, Maryland, that included a solar greenhouse room that provided significant heating and cooling for the house. Her home was listed on the Maryland Solar Home Tour and she participated in educating hundreds of building contractors and home builders on effective and inexpensive ways to save energy.
Maryland State Government, Department of Health, Mental Hygiene Administration
In 1978, Alison Carter began her work with the State of Maryland, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Mental Health and Addictions assigned as a systems change agent to the Mental Hygiene Administration, Community Support Services, under Director Karen Mallam.
At that time, the deinstitutionalization movement prompted the release of many folks with serious mental health issues from long term care in State Mental Hospitals, and they desperately needed housing and many types of support in their communities.
In her tenure with the Maryland Mental Hygiene Administration, Carter advocated for major systems changes, innovations, and accomplishments. She supported those shifts by awarding sub-grants using Federal grant funding that she acquired, administered, and monitored.
Partnering with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Office of Community Support Services; dedicated Maryland mental health professionals, and consumers of mental health services, Carter helped to create and then funded projects designed to develop new community support services for people diagnosed with severe mental illness. Some projects prioritized mental health consumer projects and programs, and others focused on underserved populations: women, minorities, homeless, substance abusers, and elderly.
From 1978 to1993, Carter served in the State of Maryland government in the Mental Hygiene Administration as Deputy Director of Community Support Services and as Administrative Officer. As State Grant Writer, Project Director, and Principal Investigator, she wrote, was awarded, administered, and carefully monitored Federal NIMH, Community Support Services grants to the State of Maryland. She was awarded over $13 million dollars in Federal grants, equivalent to 43 million dollars in 2021.
The last three years she worked, Carter's three annual grant submissions received the highest competitive grant scores in the nation, making her the top scoring grant writer in the United States for her category of grants for three years in a row.
Known as the "conscience" of the Maryland State Mental Hygiene Administration, she advocated for respectful caring services. She challenged herself and others to excellence in creating humane value based mental health services that truly empower, as they build on each individuals strengths to heal.
Working closely with folks in the mental health consumer movement, as John Lewis would say - she was "good trouble" in the service system as she advocated for and strongly supported mental health service innovations that embraced the development and growth of the consumer movement, and having consumers at the table with a voice in all aspects of service and care.
Carter, along with a consumer leader and a support program director, were the first to present concepts of consumer empowerment at the National Institute of Mental Health.
Many of the community support services and creative mental health consumer initiatives that Carter funded are now national models of mutual support, individualized and empowering community supports for recovery, and value based trainings.
Some major accomplishments through sub-grants she helped to develop, then awarded and monitored as Principle Investigator with Federal grant funding include:
---Startup funding, over a three year period, for twelve community support programs in different areas of Maryland for people being deinstitutionalized from mental hospitals.
---Grant to University of Maryland - among the first research/demonstration projects in the U.S. to study ways of helping people who are both mentally ill and drug addicted.
---Grant to University of Maryland - The first study in the U.S. to determine what helps individuals with long term mental illness to get jobs and stay employed. When the proposed research methods were not working for anyone involved, in what was WAY outside usual research protocols, Carter shut the project down, had them rewrite it with newly acquired knowledge, and then restart the work with research and learning that was truly helpful.
---Grant to Peter Rabins at Hopkins, author of The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life to design, implement, and assess innovative mobile mental health services for elderly folks, now a national service model. Hopkin's sited Carter's assistance with their grant as exceptional and excellent.
---Grant to the homeless services provider network for innovative multi-service system coordination and education projects to assist over 4,200 homeless mentally ill.
---Each annual grant planned, funded, coordinated and delivered innovative training initiatives and statewide conferences that focused on providing personalized client centered mental health and community living support.
---During her last three years of State service, Carter assembled a think tank of system innovators to develop training initiatives based on new successful services. She then funded monthly trainings entitled "The Innovation Project" to inspire and train multi service system staff and consumers at all levels to practice self-care, to support one another, and provide the most effective supports to folks with serious mental health issues. In one year, over 2,400 attended these very popular monthly trainings, where anyone could get a relaxing shoulder rub by one of many massage therapists Carter hired and stationed at the back of the conference room.
Mental Health Service Innovations and Support to the Development and Growth of the Mental Health Consumer Movement.
Carter worked closely with Mike Finkle, Director of On Our Own of Maryland, and with other mental health consumers to develop innovative grant projects that she funded, and administered. Sub-grants included:
---The first State funded mental health consumer run drop-in center
---The first Statewide mental health consumer conference
---The first National mental health consumer conference
NOTE: both the Statewide and National Consumer Conferences then became annual events, funded by Community Support Services (CSS), NIMH
---Startup funding for On Our Own of Maryland – the first statewide mental health consumer organization with a mission of coordination, advocacy, training, mutual support, development of new drop-in centers, and defining and working with other consumer issues
---The first formal self-help training program for mental health consumers to be leaders and advocates for better services – "Leadership, Empowerment, and Advocacy Project" (LEAP). LEAP is now a national model!
The Anti-Stigma Project
In 1993, after listening and responding to mental health consumers' feedback, Carter focalized the issues, secured a Federal grant, and funded the Anti-stigma Project in 1995, to improve and change the service system by raising awareness and sensitivity to stigmatizing attitudes and practices within the service system.
Under the leadership of Jennifer Brown and On Our Own of Maryland, the project grew to have both national and international impacts. In 2015, the 20th anniversary of the Anti-Stigma Project was celebrated. At that time, over 25,000 consumers, mental health care providers, and related system staff had benefited and trained in transforming and dealing with personal and systemic mental health stigma issues. The Project continues with national impacts and thousands more participating. . .
In 2000, Carter was awarded the Visionary Award by On Our Own of Maryland for conceptualizing and funding the Anti-Stigma Project that she based on mental health consumers feedback about their experiences with system wide stigma.
MAJOR HEALTH CHALLENGES –
In 1988, Alison was bitten by a deer tick and contracted Lyme Disease. New bites and infections for seven years in a row, forced her early retirement in 1993 from the State of Maryland, Mental Hygiene Administration. The illness was debilitating and she spent eight years in bed. Lyme brought many health issues including Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, heart and nervous system problems, Fibromyalgia, and much more in this 33 year health challenge.
She and husband Sandy Bienen moved from Baltimore County to their intended retirement site in West Virginia after her doctor said, "Move or die" as he didn't think she could survive the eighth new Lyme infection. She used traditional medical approaches as well as exploring alternative healing modalities, but has only recovered a percentage of her health and vitality before Lyme.
"TICKS ARE TICKETS"
Alison calls the "TICKS HER TICKETS" as they closed the door to life as she knew it, but opened the door to a new life with other opportunities.
Despite her Lyme disability, Carter created a new redefined life doing what she was/is able to do, and focused on developing and using other interests and skills! As of 2021, she continues her healing process and is steadfast in contributing to life and to future generations as much as possible. Following are parts of that new life she created.
THE ACTIVIST
1998-2004, Carter was a founding member and CoDirector of the Morgan County Citizen's Coalition (MCCC). Working mostly from her bed due to Lyme Disease, she still managed to be a key player in building a community organization with over 650 members to inform the community about major problems with plans for a four lane highway and to stop the initiative that would have paved over the paradise that is Morgan County, West Virginia.
Through MCCC, she also led efforts to successfully shut down a construction waste site. If it had continued as planned, it would have significantly increased truck traffic and severely impacted quality of air and water in Southern Morgan County.
In 1998-2000, Carter took on Prison Health Services – after they repeated refused to provide lifesaving medical treatment for a friend incarcerated after drug related offenses. Following the path of her longtime activist hero, Saul Alinsky, (Reveille for Radicals), and desperate to save his life, Carter developed, organized, and then threatened prison officials by sharing her plan for the "big whammy". The whammy? A choir of loving church ladies agreed to support her plan to save his life. To bring this horrendous evil situation to light, the choir would ride a bus to the prison, sing hymns, and speak to TV and radio stations that Carter had lined up to cover the event. When Carter advised prison officials of the plan, they immediately caved to avoid this public confrontation, and agreed to oversee and provide essential lifesaving care. Unfortunately, this level of radical activist action was needed to save a life, but thankfully, opened the door for some improved health services in State prisons.
THE ARTIST
Amateur Photographer
Alison loves taking photos and enjoys considerable success as an amateur photographer. Taking thousands of photo was doable within the limits imposed by her health issues.
Successes included:
---Her photos were featured in eight calendars with wide distribution, including Alley Cat Allies, and four different years as a featured monthly photo for the "Roadsides in Bloom Calendar" with an annual distribution over 20,000.
---Her photos were displayed in nine art gallery exhibitions, including Nails in the Wall Gallery in NJ, the Ice House Gallery in Berkeley Springs, WV, Washington County Museum of Fine Art, and Hagerstown Community College.
---She won 6 photo contests, and 5 nature organizations featured her photos in flyers and reports.
---She won the Morgan Messenger newspapers photo contests in the Nature Category 2006, 2007, and 2008. The newspaper then asked her to judge future competitions.
---Since then, the Morgan Messenger newspaper has published over 100 of her photos.
---She received 103 awards at the Annual Morgan County Fair, including 5 Best in Show.
THE ART SHOW CURATOR
The fall of 2010, Alison curated an art exhibit at the Ice House Special Exhibits Gallery in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, that was extremely well received. At her invitation, twenty nine talented artists created original art that expressed the Lakota prayer "All My Relations". The central focus of the exhibit was on Star Laws gifted to her from Lakota Chief Golden Light Eagle and Chief Blessed Pipe Man. Wil Hershberger's nature photos and nature sound recordings, which are catalogued at Cornell University, were also featured.
THE WRITER
Playwright
In 1978, Carter's first venture in play writing was a feminist, nonviolent, metaphysical version of Little Red Riding Hood that was produced by the Baltimore Puppet Theatre in Fells Point, Baltimore, MD. She was honored on opening night with flowers and a standing ovation!
In 2008, she won second place in the West Virginia Writer's Competition with her full length three act play, "A Frog and A Scorpion." The play was read twice before an audience and has done well in play competitions in Baltimore and DC, but unfortunately was just below full theatre stage production level.
The Newspaper Columnist
In Jan – Feb 2009, she wrote a six-week column for the Morgan Messenger called "Strictly Amateur" giving photo composition tips to develop "the eye" for photos and get our best shot. Other columns were published in 2010, 2012-2015. She served as judge for the photo contest.
The Story Writer - Published
-2004, short story "Three Deep Breaths"
-10-15-2006, Article: "Be the Star You Are"
-2008, Carter's chapter on ascension, raising consciousness and vibration is included in the book, Perspectives on Ascension – Sustenance for Humanity's Journey Home.
-2020, her story about her cat, entitled "I AM Always With You", was published as the final chapter in the book, Creating Love.
-2021, short story "Grandma's Refrigerator" is scheduled for publication.
The Book Author
2021, Rainbow Stargate 33 by Alison Carter, available late 2021, with other books in process.
SPIRITUAL WORK – Exploring the Magic and Mystery of Life
Instantaneous Medically Documented Miracle Healing – Intro to Energy Healing
In the mid 1970's, after a medically documented instantaneous healing of a torn cartilage in her left knee, she studied intensively with the healing channel - Janet McGuigan, a psychiatric nurse who was a Cherokee Lineage Shaman, a Healing Touch Practitioner, and a key resource that Delores Krieger worked with to develop healing techniques presented in her book Therapeutic Touch. Janet's energy work, unusual brain waves, and amazing healing results were researched extensively. Alison assisted McGuigan in her energy healing workshops and trainings for doctors and other medical professionals.
Healing Service Work
Alison taught Healing Touch thru the Avante Garde Bookstore in Towson, Maryland.
With a Circle of her energy Healing Touch students, she founded and served on the Board of the Abaton Healing Center that supported the community with free guided meditations, free alternative energy healing sessions, and spiritual development classes for 17 (seventeen) years.
She taught stress management for Baltimore County Adult Education Programs.
Spiritual Studies
Alison is certified as a 6th Sensory Teacher by Sonia Choquette. She studied personally and intensively with Michael Harner, Janet McGuigan, Jean Houston, Barry Neil Kaufman, Mary Thunder, Chief Golden Light Eagle, Morris Netherton, Karl Schlotterbeck, Robert McKee, Larry Harris, Jim Self, Michael Smith, and LD Porter. She is grateful for the many other wonderful friends, coaches, and mentors in her life. She believes we are all students; we are all teachers.
National Workshop Leader -
After a second miraculous energy healing in 2003 thru the work of Larry Harris, she studied with him and assisted in his Transformational Energy Workshops throughout the US for three years.
EARTH ASCENSION PROJECT
Her home is located in Morgan County, WV, on land that has been acknowledged by spiritual teachers and native elders as a sacred place for Earth healing and ceremony. Since 1996, she has facilitated rituals and meditations that assist in raising vibrations within ourselves first, and then within the Earth, and within All My Relations. She captured this 20 year spiritual adventure in her upcoming book, Rainbow Stargate 33.
Honored by Native American Tribal Leaders
Several Native American leaders honored Alison with the label "Heyoka", which means "the sacred clown". The clown sees things from alternative perspectives and can be very silly!
Anyone who knows her personally would likely agree with the "Heyoka" label/title.
A local medicine man, Butch McNelly honored her, gifting her with the amazing blessing of a special traditionally prepared Staff that he made. It is a key for accessing energies of the area.
Alison was honored by Lakota Medicine Chief Golden Light Eagle when he gifted her with sacred Star Laws and charged her to teach them. She studied and taught Star Laws from 4-2003 to 6-2005. Note: On September 25, 1999, the Smithsonian Institute honored Chief Golden Light Eagle and his encoding of Star Laws in Star Laws: The Maka Wichapi Wicohan and placed Star Laws in the Museum as part of a "sacred bundle" for the Native Americans.
Alison's courage was honored by native teacher Mary Thunder from Texas. Her work to raise vibrations was acknowledged by native elders and Earth Wisdom Keepers, Henry Neise from Maryland, Butch McNelly from West Virginia, Willeru from Peru, Chief Bavado from Seattle, Danny Vader from the Netherlands, and Mare Cromwell, best-selling author from Maryland.
Talk Show Speaker
June 2015, she was the guest for the hour long radio show, Two Modern Mystics, speaking about this sacred site where she is blessed to live.
LIFE PARTNER
Alison Carter and Sandy Bienen, her husband of 33 years, met at work at the State of Maryland, Mental Hygiene Administration. Sandy was a top level State government official serving as the Southern Maryland Regional Director overseeing state mental health hospitals and community services. He loved to tell stories and a favorite was how Alison's hair brushed his face while they were having a private conversation during a work conference and how that "changed his whole world".
Sandy was a PhD psychologist with two master's degrees, one from Johns Hopkins University and the other from the University of Maryland. Alison and Sandy were united in their commitment to mental health consumers' full participation in the mental health system and in supporting innovations in caring and empowering mental health services.
When Sandy retired, he followed his mother's theatre legacy as she had been a Ziegfeld Folly Girl in NYC. He pursued acting on stage and in movies, and was a wonderful story teller.
Sandy impacted thousands of people in the course of a life well lived, and is sorely missed. His last day on Earth, he and Alison made a big vat of chicken vegetable soup. He chopped, she did the rest. His last words to her were about how she seasoned the soup – "That last tweak you made . . . SUPERB!" He died peacefully at 84 years young on March 23, 2021 after falling asleep in his favorite chair.
HOME BASE
Alison resides with her brother James Carter, the amazing genius Clock Doc, and four Master cats in her adopted state of West Virginia.
With many innovations from Alison – (remember - she says "she can't help herself"), her home was designed by Hans Orthner, Architect for Deck House, an environmentally conscious company. Deck House attracted her as their promotional book cover had pictures of woods and nature instead of houses. Deck House uses layered beams instead of killing huge old growth forest trees, and grows mahogany trees to build their own window frames, doors, and wood trim, once again preserving old growth trees!
Blessed with a stunning view of the Cacapon Mountain, her home, "Sleepy Creek Retreat," is a place for reflection, blessing Earth, raising vibrations, and healing as she looks forward to continuing contributions to life now and to future generations.
Currently, Alison is completing several books on tending our spirits and raising our vibrations in our bodies, in our lives, and with All Our Relations on this precious Mother Earth.
As she clears her "issues" and raises her own vibration, she is gradually, slowly, increasing the number of her steps that fulfill her life's goal and intention to:
LIVE AND SHINE MY SPIRIT'S INNER LOVELIGHT,
SO MY EVERY STEP ON EARTH IS A BLESSING.
Photo captions:
PHOTO 1: Linda Alison D. Carter
PHOTO 2: "EASE PEACE LOVE" –
This represents a state of BEING. Being relaxed - at EASE, has been a major challenge of my life, but the body needs EASE to allow our life force to flow, nurture, heal, and invigorate us. With EASE, we can then be peaceful, like and love our Self, which is a base for truly loving Others.
PHOTO 3: "TRANSFORMATION EVOLUTION" –
There is such beauty as life emerges and evolves. This photo was taken just outside my office, beside my purple painted deck. It represents the stages of life. The butterfly transforms from a tiny egg and evolves to flying magnificence. The gorgeous lilac emerged from a tiny seed to sculptured colorful beauty. They are great models for life!
PHOTO 4: "ALL MY RELATIONS" –
This phrase is a gift from Native American leaders who visited and performed ceremony on this sacred site where I live. It is a powerful reminder that on Earth here, we are all relations - the Mineral, Plant, Animal, Human Kingdoms, and this includes those who share this space with us in other higher energy dimensions.
About Marquis Who's Who®
Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America®, Marquis Who's Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Today, Who's Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. Marquis® now publishes many Who's Who titles, including Who's Who in America®, Who's Who in the World®, Who's Who in American Law®, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare®, Who's Who in Science and Engineering®, and Who's Who in Asia®. Marquis® publications may be visited at the official Marquis Who's Who® website at www.marquiswhoswho.com.
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