Ingredients of Outliers: Women Game Changers

By John Shufeldt

While many of us can quickly name five top-achieving men of our time, many of our forefathers, and a glut of masculine trail blazers, the gap certainly exists between the presence of accomplished, world-changing career women, and the availability of books which represent their powerful voice and life giving stories.

Consequently, Dr. Shufeldt interviewed six remarkable women whose bravery, innovation, and charisma paved the way for others, both men and women, and he began writing his third book in the Outlier Series, Ingredients of Outliers: Women Game Changers.

Dr. Shufeldt calls these chosen individuals: “Outliers,” defined as: “An exceptional person for whom excellence is merely a starting point toward a destination far beyond our normal definition of achievement.”

This book is a kaleidoscope look at the lives of women who have humbly and tenaciously pushed past bristly beginnings and daunting opposition to improve systems and circumstances for those in their midst. They have defended the innocent, nurtured selflessly, and proceeded graciously, yet fearlessly past what they thought was possible. Dr. Shufeldt gathers their insights and advice through thought-provoking interviews and uncovers expert tips, and the potent truths that carried these women beyond their wildest expectations.

The women in this book include:

Award-winning novelist Jane Hamilton, who reveals how she got discovered, writing from an apple orchard in Wisconsin and became the author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, which both became Oprah’s Book Club selections.
World renowned environmental journalist, wildlife photographer, and TEDx Presenter, Sharon Guynup, whose investigatory pieces on wildlife conservation have been published in publications like The Smithsonian, National Geographic, and USA Today, exposing human health and endangered species issues
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Mentor, philanthropist, Attorney-CPA and 2014 Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate, Christine Jones, who served as Chief Counsel for the world’s largest domain registrar, advocating for policy that would make the internet a safer for children
Passionate full-time physician assistant, mother of nine, and former star of WEtv’s Raising sextuplets Jenny McClendon, who balances a career and medical missions, while keeping family as her top priority
Prolific humanitarian, minority student advocate, physician leader in the field of ophthalmology and academic, Mildred MG Olivier, MD, who is known for her work in Haiti and expert panelist appearances on the Dr. Oz Show
Attorney and Former Iowa State Chief Supreme Court Justice Marsha Ternus, who began as a bank teller and became the first woman to serve as chief justice in Iowa’s highest court, and fought for children and those lost in the justice system, remaining active in her community and family
Read now and take advantage of the opportunity to get to know this diverse group of accomplished women, and let their expertise and leadership pave the path for your pursuit of excellence. Join the ranks of the women outliers who embody empowerment and strive after greatness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Shufeldt
• Release date: Oct 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781940288079

John Shufeldt

John Shufeldt is a serial student, an indefatigable change agent and a multidisciplinary entrepreneur who has studied the traits and qualities of extraordinary individuals for over three decades. In Ingredients of Outliers John guides us through a number of traits common to outliers and inspires us leave our comfort zones to join their ranks.John received his BA from Drake University in 1982 and his MD from the University of Health Sciences/ The Chicago Medical School in 1986. He completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in 1989 where he spent his final year as Chief Resident. John received his MBA in 1995, and his Juris Doctorate in 2005, both from Arizona State University. He is admitted to the State Bar in Arizona, the Federal District Court, and Supreme Court of the United States.He has started numerous health and non-health care businesses and continues to practice emergency medicine and law. He writes and lectures on a variety of subject matters to graduate medical, business and law students. He is an adjunct professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of law where he teaches a clinic on Health Law Entrepreneurism. He serves on the Drake University Board of Trustees and the Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law Alumni Board.You can find more information out about John and his work at www.ingredientsofoutliers.com

Book preview

Sharon Guynup

Q: Where did your path to becoming a journalist/writer/ photographer/editor start?

A: I guess it started in first grade. I still have vivid memories of reading my first book—it was about a bluebird. I became a voracious reader and started writing my own books in second grade. My grandfather, Bill McKenzie, got me an Instamatic camera when I was five, and he'd give me film and get it processed for me. He was an amateur photographer who had a darkroom in the basement and he was always shooting portraits of us.

He was a huge animal lover. I spent many hours in the backyard with him watching and feeding the birds, and it gave me a lifelong love of cardinals—and fed a deep love for wildlife. My grandfather also subscribed to magazines for me, showing me there was a wider world through the pages of National Geographic and LIFE magazine. He taught me to look at things, to observe and appreciate nature, and look through a viewfinder.

My mother had serious health issues. She was in a lot of pain, had many surgeries, and as a result, became addicted to prescription drugs. She died of an overdose when I was fourteen. My father comes from a long line of alcoholics. He was never visibly drunk, but he could be abusive. It was a tough upbringing. I started running away as an adolescent. It was the kind of situation where you could either succumb, putting your head down to get by, you could fight—or you could get away. I fought, which didn’t turn out well, so I left. At one point, when I was fifteen, I got a job and decided I was never going home.

But, I did go home one day, after I’d been gone for about two months. Winter had come, I was broke, and had no money to buy warm clothes. But my father had changed the locks. My neighbors saw me climbing in through a window and called the police. I got arrested. They took me to a juvenile detention center, and my father wouldn’t let me come home. He told me I’d have to stay there until I was eighteen.

But there was a social worker there who came to me and said, Look, there are other kids here who’ve done really bad, violent things, who shouldn’t be on the streets. You’re a good kid. You’re just in a bad situation. You need to get out of here because you don’t belong here and it will ruin your life. You need to go home, go to school, and do exactly what you’re supposed to do. I will talk to your father. And she did.

I went home and I went to school. The next year, I talked my father into signing me out of high school. I dropped out on my sixteenth birthday and left home the same week. It was a huge turning point. I'm a fighter and a hard worker, and what I fight for now is wildlife and the protection of human health. I'm glad I found a positive place to channel that energy.

Looking back on my childhood, I'm grateful there were people along the way at critical points who taught me what I needed to learn, who supported me and helped me get to the next step. So, it’s not about feeling proud of myself; it’s about feeling really grateful.

When I was sixteen, I'd only finished ninth grade, but I started shooting pictures. A friend introduced me to a man who ran a local wedding and portrait photo studio, Tom Canariato. He taught me to process and print black-and-white film. For the next couple of years, I worked part-time in exchange for darkroom time or sometimes to make money. And for about four years straight, I shot pictures for him at Christmas time of little kids with Santa in a department store.

Q: Did you follow your photography passion? How did that begin?

A: When I was sixteen, I lent a friend some money he couldn’t pay back, so he gave me a 35mm camera. From that moment on, that Pentax was always on my shoulder and I shot pictures all the time. I didn’t know what I was doing and I hadn’t yet looked at any work by art or documentary photographers. But I loved photography, and was completely obsessed. I lived it and breathed it. Photography was what I wanted to do, and it saved me.

To be on your own when you're too young to take care of yourself isn’t easy. About a year after I dropped out of high school, a friend, John Lord, took me with him to Ramapo College in New Jersey, where I sat in on his literature class: Origins and Development of the Beat Generation, and an art history class where they were covering the Impressionists. I was knocked out. Wow, this is college? This is awesome.

So, I took my equivalency tests. I’d always read a lot, and so I scored well, which is a sad statement since I’d spent so little time in high school. It just shows that high school isn't nearly rigorous enough.

I got my diploma and enrolled at Ramapo. It was a small state school with a curriculum that focused on arts and humanities. I was seventeen and would have been starting my senior year of high school. About that time, I met Earle Bailey, who became a strong influence in my life. We’re still friends today. He was about seven years older than I was. He had this great career as a disc jockey on WLIR-FM in Long Island, and though he was famous, he was a down-to-earth, kind, positive person. A lot of the people around me were just getting by, but Earle had a broader vision—and he was living it. He, probably more in deed than in word, showed me that there was a whole world of possibilities out—and that it’s possible to follow your dreams.

But Earle also helped me stay on track at a pivotal time, something that I recently had the chance to remind him of and thank him for. I’d transferred to Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) in Rochester, New York. It was one of the toughest times of my life. I was nineteen. When I arrived, they informed me they wouldn’t let me defer tuition. So I was waitressing too many nights a week to meet the monthly payments. I was broke, exhausted, working all the time, and if I wasn’t working in a restaurant and taking home extra food when I worked, I wouldn’t have been eating. I’d get home at one or two in the morning, do homework, and have to get up at six to go to school. Then my camera broke. I didn’t have a cent, nor any way to get another camera. And then, unasked, Earle bought me a camera and shipped it to me—without telling me he’d done it. When I opened that box, I cried. And I kept going.

Since I had to pay my own tuition, I was in and out of school. Sometimes I had to take time off to save money, and I also managed to travel a bit, shooting pictures. I hitchhiked, took drive-away cars—I drove cross-country from New Jersey to California three times, zig-zagging America and taking pictures, and went to Mexico with a couple of friends—and that was where I made my first interesting photographs. When I was twenty-one, I married James Ruggia, a poet.

It took me eight years to get my degree. But I finally graduated from college in 1983, when I was 25, and started freelancing.

Q: What did you decide to do at this point?

A: I settled into an internship at Magnum Photos in New York. Many of the world’s best documentary photographers were part of this photographer-owned agency, including my heroes: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Susan Meiselas, Josef Koudelka, Bruce Davidson, Eugene Richards, and more. I worked in the photo library part time for the next three years, but I was still able to travel—they held my job for me while I was away on assignment. I became a photojournalist, working for newspapers and magazines and on personal documentary projects.

But 1986 was my Triple Crown year: I was granted a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship in photography—on the day my son Nick was born. And I had just been notified that I’d been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in photography.

Q: How did your Triple Crown change your life?

A: Well, James and I packed up two-and-a-half month-old Nick and I went to live and photograph in Turkey for a year. The Turks adore children and they doted on baby Nick—his nickname that year was The Little Sultan.

That grant, more than anything, changed the way I felt about myself. Getting a Fulbright was the kind of validation I needed because I’d been a high school dropout—which at the time was somewhat synonymous with being a juvenile delinquent. It made me feel that, at last, I was a professional and my work was valued.

I had exhibitions and I traveled a lot on assignment. I decided that if I couldn’t bring Nick with me, I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t leave him. So he grew up all over the world. It was easy when he was little—he was in private school and they didn’t mind me taking him out of class for weeks or even a month as long as he did his work while he was gone. He spent huge blocks of his childhood in Latin America and was nearly fluent in Spanish by the time he reached middle school.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I got divorced when he was three. Not long after, I met my current partner, photographer Steve Winter, and we made many of those trips together. But Steve was often gone for three or four months at a time, and more and more, as Nick’s curriculum grew more difficult, I was doing local assignments in the New York area.

By the time I reached my mid-thirties, hauling a hundred pounds of camera and lighting gear in and out of the house every day was getting harder and harder. The more I worked, the more back pain I was in. I realized that as much as I loved photography – and I still do to this day – I was going to have to change careers.

So I went for career counseling at NYU—and they told me I should be a photographer! But writing came in as a close second. There'd been a real fork in the road when I was in college