Jo Packham Joins the Laura Kelly Design Team

It is truly with such great honor that I announce that Jo Packham is the honorary member of the inaugural Laura Kelly Design Team. As a leader in the creative industry, she brings such depth to this team of awesome bloggers. I can speak for the whole team when I say that we are all super excited to work alongside her on our mission to inspire others to create!

Meet Jo!

Jo Packham – Where Women Create – Author and Mentor

Jo Packham, the creator/Editor-in-Chief of WHERE WOMEN CREATE, WHERE WOMEN COOK, and WHERE WOMEN CREATE BUSINESS has been a leading innovator in the handmade publishing market for more than 30 years. A successful entrepreneur with her own publishing company, WWC PRESS, she is currently partnering with Stampington & Company to produce the best selling magazines: Where Women Create — Inspiring Work Spaces of Extraordinary Women; Where Women Cook, The Heart & Soul of Cooking; and where women create BUSINESS, A Passion for Success. Jo has personally authored more than 40 titles, including her best selling titles: Where Women Create, Where Women Create: Book of Organization, Where Women Cook CELEBRATE, and PIEOGRAPHY.

Jo is also partnering with Sizzix / Ellison licensing WWCook’s line of die cuts and embossing templates

Her publishing company, Chapelle Ltd., has packaged more than 1,000 titles for most major publishers in the industry including: Time Warner, Oxmoor House, Meredith Corp. (Better Homes & Gardens), Rodale Press, Random House, Chronicle, and others. Jo’s current imprint, WWC PRESS, is published in partnership with Quarry Books, a division of Quarto Publishing in London.

In 2010, with Nancy Soriano, the editor-in-Chief of Country Living for 10 years, Jo co-founded THE CREATIVE CONNECTION – Women, Passion, Business. TCC is a national conference and market celebrating creative women and entrepreneurs. Bringing together the creative process of handmade goods and food with the marketing savvy of business and social media. TCC draws on the rich experience of industry experts, attendees, and best selling authors. Hands-on workshops are joined with social networking and business panels that focus on the practical details of setting up, running, and marketing a business and leveraging its impact through blogging and other social media.

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In its second year TCC joined forces with BlogHer as its official media partner. BlogHer, the largest women’s social media network, receives over 25 million unique views per month. “BlogHer recognizes the handmade community THE CREATIVE CONNECTION brings together. We are honored to have the largest women’s social media community as our media partner,” said Jo Packham, creator of WHERE WOMEN CREATE and WHERE WOMEN COOK. Also partnering with TCC were its Presenting Sponsor, Sterling Publishing (Barnes & Noble, the number one how-to publisher in the world); Vogue Knitting; MaryJanesFarm; and McDonald’s.

Between 2000 and 2005, Jo and her daughter Sara embarked on a venture that helped spark the revitalization and renaissance of Historic 25^th Street in her hometown, Ogden, Utah. Working together, they opened and co-owned three upscale boutiques, Ruby & Begonia, The White Fig, and Olive & Dahlia, in the heart of this old commercial district. Their vision and creative entrepreneurship was rewarded with two Gifts & Decorative Accessories Retailer awards, one for visual marketing in 2002 and another for community service in 2003. Jo is also Chair and has supervised over the past 11 years the growth of Ogden’s Christmas Village to become the largest holiday celebration in the state of Utah.

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Her life has been a journey that seems as if it were taken straight from the pages of a storybook. She looks forward to the promises oftomorrow and is proud to say that every single day she is blessed to be able to do what she loves, that she is surrounded by family and friends whom she adores and respects, and that she is trusted enough to represent those whose passion is to create with their hands…whether it be food, art, or business. She resides in Ogden Utah.

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I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jo as not only a mentor and colleague but also as a friend. The enthusiasm and love that she exudes towards creative living (outside of the box) is not only inspiring but also empowering. I always leave conversations and time with her ready to take action and try new things. She attended my CREATE, Make and Celebrate Retreat in the fall of 2015 and left quite an impression. You can read about that HERE. and find out why she is driving the bus in the photograph below!