Barbara Payne - Chairman
SWWAN for 29 years, SWWAN mother 11 years
Profile
Barbara Payne is an author, speaker, publisher,
writer, editor and marketing consultant. She’s
spent 22 years since her divorce as a single
working woman—11 of them as a single
mother also trying to find time for love—and
she empathizes deeply with all women who live
the single lifestyle, whether by choice or
by chance. She founded SWWAN to provide a
homeplace for single women to celebrate their
joys, sorrows, and challenges--and to provide
discounts and opportunities to recognize their
accomplishments.
“The world's a busy place—and
growing more so by the hour for most of us,"
says Ms. Payne. "Especially for single
working women--the women who really DO do
it all, most often by themselves.”
The SWWAN website is designed to provide news
and information of value—and to allow
women to touch each other’s hearts with
their stories. The SWWAN community is designed
to enhance the single lifestyle—and
thus make the world a better place for all.
Today Barbara is an independent professional
who specializes in helping executives, entrepreneurs
and independent professionals translate their
strengths and their passions into their True
Voice—and use it to attract loyal, profitable
customers. She develops strategies for using
corporate blogs and executive communications
to help cutting-edge organizations reach their
goals. Visit her professional website.
She also publishes several blogs, among them
the SWWAN
Blog, BlogforBusiness.com,
and BioMedNews.org.
Her clients have included the Cleveland Clinic
Foundation, the Lerner Research Institute,
Eaton Corporation, Microsoft, Cleveland State
University, and dozens of small- to medium-size
enterprises across the U.S. and across the
ocean.
Background
Born the second daughter/third child in a
family of ten children (eight boys and two
girls), Barbara attended Catholic grade school
and all-girls high school. After graduating
and spending three months in a career as a
legal secretary—one of the few options
considered open to women from average families
in the U.S. at that time (the mid-1960s)—she
knew that her brains and abilities were being
wasted and started saving money to go to college.
When her money ran out after a semester,
during which she made the Dean’s List—and
was the first student ever at the University
of Illinois to pass the Rhetoric Proficiency
examination—she returned in despair
to a secretarial career, having no background
to understand what other options there might
be. Soon she met her future husband and began
a marriage the lasted 18 years and produced
two daughters.
Barbara attended classes while she was married
and raising the kids. When she first heard
feminist ideas about women’s equality
back in the early 70s, she argued with her
attorney husband ‘til 3 in the morning—and
then out of fear, she pretended that she’d
never heard the ideas because she had a small
baby at the time and had no idea what she
could do about them.
Thirty years after that first foray into
college, and 10 years into her life as single-mother-of-two,
Barbara graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in Marketing Media. Her search for
employment that would pay the mortgage and
provide for her two children took her first
into sales, and then her writing skills led
her towards marketing. Eventually, she founded
her own marketing consulting company, ReallyGoodFreelanceWriter.com
LLC. Whether automotive, trucking or software,
training, high tech, and medicine, she has
forged her own way in many fields.
Now the step-grandmother of two and the proud grandmother of her single
daughter’s first child, she is dedicated to making SWWAN a true
resource for single women everywhere around the world. For more about
SWWAN, visit SWWAN, or contact Barbara
directly by email.
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