Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere appreciation and gratitude to the many people who worked with us in bringing forth the stories and ideas for Dealing with the Tough Stuff.

First and foremost to Suzanne Kingsbury, without whom this book would still be a very interesting collection of papers piled high on the dining room table. Her terrific sense of humor, constant support, clarity of thinking, and amazing ability to discern a clear and compelling narrative from our tangled stories has been the driving force of this book.

To Johanna Vondeling from Berrett-Koehler Publishers, who encouraged us to write this book because she wanted to read it, and to Deb Nelson from Social Venture Network, who started us on this path of becoming authors in the SVN book series.

To Lori Hanau who did a wonderful job in the interview process with many of our contributors, and to Nancy Doyle who transcribed all those hours of tapes.

To Leslie Kelly, Steve Mintz, Pat Beu, Carol Berry, David Berge, Rick Slater, Ricky Berger, Jan Eastman, Dawn Mcgee, and Elizabeth Crook, who were there throughout the various tough stuff for Lisa.

To Glenn Sleezer, first accountant; Mary Jones, first employee; June Embury, first partner; Melanie Grimes, early customer; and Walter Georis, the young man on the escalator, who have been there throughout Margot’s stories.

And most especially to Stephen Schoen and Meg Donahue, who have supported us, pushed us, laughed with us, questioned us, and helped us through this past year of writing.

To all, we say a heartfelt thank you!