Debbie Gawrych, a 1975 graduate of Sycamore High School, was chosen “most likely to succeed” by her classmates. It was a vote for her tenacity as much as it was for intelligence.

        Today, Ms. Gawrych is a Greensboro, N.C., business consultant whose focus is on helping others chart a path to success.

        “Though I think I'm a good writer, my strength is teaching — oral presentations,” she says.

        From companies like Borders Group and Barnes & Noble to Starbucks and Aetna US Healthcare, Ms. Gawrych's mission is to instill leadership in people and organizations by urging groups and individuals to look within for direction.

        “Early on in my corporate career, I got a lot of "What's up with her?”' Ms. Gawrych says. “She looks like a woman, but she has this analytic-driven thing going on.

        “She's ambitious. She wants to be successful. What's wrong with her? She is too much. But I figure it's all a dance. As women learn more about themselves, they realize it's OK to break down walls.”

        Earlier this month, she returned to Cincinnati to offer a seminar to a networking group at Procter & Gamble. Her message, pegged to her new audiobook, Seven Aspects of Sisterhood: Empowering Women Through Self-Discovery, never fails to elicit this response from women, she says:

        “They want to know why I use king and warrior as models. Those are action-sounding, masculine-sounding names. But the personality model is for both men and women.

        “It's being comfortable with who you are and that your strengths can help, but if you over-do the strengths, it becomes weakness.”

        Her audiobook is for sale at bookstores throughout the region.

        Excellence quest

        Dr. Robert K. Cooper, a guru of personal excellence based in Ann Arbor, Mich., now produces a free newsletter that offers regular insights into achievement and how to accomplish goals.

        He urges people to embrace what he calls Calm Effectiveness, particularly during times of stress.

        Dr. Cooper, who has studied and written about cutting-edge discoveries in human physiology, has a few simple suggestions for people who want to get more out of work and life.

        The first thing to do is slow down, he says.

        Take a personal, strategic pause and reduce your mistakes by up to 35 percent.

        “A person's alertness is triggered by key internal and external factors that can be considered switches on the control panel of the mind,” Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a researcher who studies the biology of star performance, says in Dr. Cooper's first newsletter.

        It's incredibly simple to trigger those switches, too:

        Breath deeply, throw your shoulders back to get more blood flowing to the brain, drink ice water to jump-start your metabolism, gaze from time to time away from your work at a bright light and finally, target your heart at people and challenges.

        And at challenging people.

        Receive the e-mail through Dr. Cooper's Web site at www.robertkcooper.com.

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