Alison Whitmire is a principal with C-Lever Biz, a Chair for CEO Roundtables with Vistage International and the curator for TEDxPugetSound. Alison is a CPA (inactive), MBA and certified coach. Alison is about opening people’s minds to create greater focus. That means helping people to ferret out what matters, to determine what they want and how they want to be and to set a course of action that gets them what they want. Alison's all-too-consuming interests include training for a half-ironman in July, learning about autism, and studying and develop insights into emotional intelligence and other critical leadership capacities. She is married with a seven year old autistic son. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.