Alyssa (Aly) Swengel

Travis Mansur

Age: 35 Occupation: Director of the Decatur Wellness Collective, yoga teacher, clinical massage therapist. the Center for Entrepreneurship Mentor Program at Millikin University. This year I mentored in a freshman business creation class to assist a group of students with their fi rst business plan.

Family: Husband, Mike; children June and Franklin; and our dog, Topanga.

Career highlights and/or accomplish

ments: My biggest career accomplishment has been becoming self employed and building an organization that helps empower the wellness of the city and that simultaneously honors the freedom and innovation of entrepreneurship in a supportive community of practitioners. One of my favorite things about the Decatur Wellness Collective is the freedom to experiment with how we provide services and the creative, collaborative way we do that as a community. We have taken practitioners that come out of normally competitive industries and helped them each develop their own business within the DWC that helps them work in a way that suits the practitioner and empowers the client. We balance this independence with an environment where di erences in education, practice and opinion can be used as collaborative opportunities for new healing strategies unique to each client. Community involvement: During the shelter in place order I have spent a lot of my time helping other small businesses navigate the SBA loan programs. For many people who are sole proprietors who have no employees it has been very confusing and challenging to get reliable information. I also am a business mentor with

What should the community do to attract

more young people to the area? I think supporting and attracting small businesses and continuing to improve the school district are integral to attracting more young people to the area.

What is the best and worst piece of ad

vice you have ever received? I think the best advice I have ever been given is: “You can fi gure this out”. I had several mentors growing up who refused to give me any advise other than to pressure me into using my own judgment or making my own decision. With that freedom there was (and still is) a lot of responsibility and consequences.

The worst advice I have ever been given is to pick a job and stick to that one thing for the rest of your career. I think there is always room for evolution in a persons experience with their career, it should evolve as they do.

What are your three favorite movies?

“Under the Tuscan Sun,” “Dan in Real Life.” It is not a movie but I love the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” and own all the DVDs. What would your perfect Saturday be like?

I would sleep in, go to a 10 a.m. yoga class, pack a lunch and take my kids to the beach or pool. Who inspires you to be better? My clients and my kids.

My biggest career accomplishment has been becoming self employed and building an organization that helps empower the wellness of the city and that simultaneously honors the freedom and innovation of entrepreneurship in a supportive community of practitioners.

SARAH JANE PHOTOGRAPHY

Congratulations Aly!

Aly Swengel, Decatur Wellness Collective Director BA, LMT, 200 E-RYT, 500 RYT, YACEP

Decatur Wellness Collective is an organization that focuses on the wellness of its clients and the physical, spiritual, mental and financial health of its practitioners.

“Aly is crazy smart, determined and dedicated to seeing the people around her succeed. Her dream with the Collective was to create a space for practitioners to be able to do the things they love and bring their passion to the community. She does this with her unbelievable integrity and determination both as a friend and as a member of the wellness community.” -Dianne Milligan, Reiki Master, LMT-

“Aly founded the Decatur Wellness Collective to shake up the way we approach healthcare in our community, shifting care from medicine-focused to holistic, integrative, and whole-person focused. She has structured our Collective around this approach, allowing private practitioners to come together in a collaborative way. Her passion to bring this to life is to be admired!” -Libby Pasquariello, MSN/ED, RN, HN-BC, RYT