In her three decades as a trial lawyer in service to over a thousand clients, Debra Fortenberry is a highly regarded advocate and trusted advisor to businesses, nonprofits, families and individuals.  She attributes her success to skills and practices that expand her capacity to listen deeply during difficult exchanges and communicate in ways that reveal a pathway through conflict.  In community with professional thought leaders, Debra offers experiential legal educational trainings that steward lawyers and law students into actions congruent with their beneficial intentions.  Her work with J. D. Essentials is inspired by her commitment to contribute to a legal system anchored in meaningful relationship and honorable purpose.

Laurel. S. Justice is an artist, psychotherapist, life coach and curator of transformational experiences. With a background in fine arts, and a 20-year career in counseling/coaching, she guides workshops and retreats around the world, using experiential modalities. She is a community leader, having served on numerous boards and commissions related to arts, wellness and collaborative placemaking. Her therapeutic work centers on what it means to to confront disruptions to fluency in the language of the heart, to trust in its stored wisdom, and to reconnect with it into adventures of mystery, creativity, and belonging. Laurel counsels and coaches high performing individuals, whose careers have had significant community and world impact, but who feel untethered from the original passion and sense of meaning that guided them to the vocation initially.