Terry Nicholetti

Biography of Terry Nicholetti, Chief Encourager

What's a former nun doing in the 70's selling Valium for Hoffmann-LaRoche? She's building her expertise in business development and networking, in a career that spans 39 years of sales and marketing, public speaking, writing, and performing. During her six years with the Washington Business Journal, Terry showed business development professionals in over 200 organizations how to use business news to improve their success when making new connections through networking. She won a national award for her seminar, Fill Your Sales Funnel, which was adapted for presentation by many of the 41 papers in the American City Business Journals family.

During her tenure at the Business Journal, Terry deepened her networking expertise through her active participation in organizations such as the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the DC, Rockville, Bethesda, and Vienna- Tysons Chambers of Commerce, and the Executive Women's Roundtable.

In 2007, Terry founded her own company, Free 2 Do It, to fulfill her mission: to inspire success in others by sharing her own experiences. As an expert in making new connections, Terry developed GetWorking Networking,__ a unique process for overcoming "networking procrastination." Audiences who listen to her humorous stories and learn her simple steps to effective and enjoyable networking activities, end up feeling, "She gets me; I can do that too!" Terry is also collaborating with Laure Kamp, LMHC, at Cornell University, on their book, GetWorking Networking__: Say "Hello" to more confidence, more connections and more customers.

As a performer, writer, and stand-up comic, Terry specializes in telling stories of her own healing experiences in ways that inspire and encourage healing and transformation in her audience members. Her solo performance, one-act play, Dance with Me, Abuelita, was a winner in the 2006 MadCap Players Winter Carnival of New Works, Washington, DC, and placed second in The ONE Festival, 2006, produced by Teatro La Tea, New York, NY. She also performed Abuelita in the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC. Terry explores the issue of procrastination as an opportunity for self- knowledge and self-motivation in her one-woman show, Frozen Kisses, about Helen Triccoli, a regional sales manager and motivational speaker - who has lost her motivation.

Terry has earned her CTM qualification in Toastmasters Intl. and is a member of the National Speakers Association and the DC Chamber of Commerce..

Terry also serves on the Board Emeritus committee of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE-DC).Terry is the author of Fed Up! (NY, Carroll and Graf, 1993) and has expressed her entrepreneurial spirit by producing and self-publishing a full-color, illustrated children's book, NoraLee's Adventures on Planet Ifwee, and its accompanying GoldStar Magic Family Pen-Pal Kit. She has sold print and radio advertising, newspaper subscriptions, pharmaceuticals, relocation services, fine jewelry, and demographic data packages. Her sales successes include: nearly doubling subscription sales from 260 to 500 in one year; closing a $60,000 deal with a major utilities company for a brand new relocation product, and outselling the competition in pharmacy orders for a major antibacterial while working for Hoffmann La-Roche.

Terry was the co-creator of both the SPARC Peer Mediation Program and the Tompkins County Alcoholism Council Peer Education Program in Ithaca, New York. One of her most fun achievements was to be selected as one of PEOPLE magazine's 2007 Fifty Most Beautiful Women over 50.