Robert Alan Black is my given name.

The name I prefer people to call me is Alan. I have a few creative pseudonyms or aliases:

Dr. Black, the c o l o r f u l white man named Black, Dr. I. L. Create, the Viz Whiz and the Creativity Wizard.

You hopefully will begin to know me as Alan.

Prior to becoming a part-time speaker I was a licensed architect, interior designer, graphics/signage designer, college professor of design, freelance cartoonist and writer.

So far I have traveled to 49 US states and 77 countries and working in over 40 of each doing workshops, seminars, facilitating meetings, keynote speaking and consulting. For weeks to months I have lived in a variety of countries: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Singapore.

I have received the CSP - Certified Speaking Professional status in NSA and IFFPS, plus the following awards from the Creative Education Foundation and its annual Creative Problem Solving Institute: Colleague, Service and Commitment Award, Distinguished Leader Award and People's Choice Award.  I have served on the ACA Board as the International Director of Connections. This year (2010) I received the American Creativity Association's Dave Tanner Champions of Creativity Award plus in Toastmasters I have completed CC, AC, AC-B, AC-S and completed all but the workshop for AC-G

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Professionally I am a creative workplace consultant and professional speaker. I specialize in the on-going development of creative thinking skills in ALL the people throughout entire workplaces and in producing creative ideas for my clients from their front and rear doors to their top floors or CEOs office.
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My professional services include speaking, consulting and training in...
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CONNECTING - Understanding Yourself to Better Work with Others
understanding yourself better in order to better understand and work with others (M.I.N.D. Design™), CP3 Values System, Behavior Patterns and other community building tools and exercises.

COORDINATING - Leading and Leadership
leading styles and skills, learning to leader from supervisor to manager to leader and even boss when needed.

COMMUNICATING - Professional Speaking to Training to Writing
one on one to large audience speeches

COLLABORATING - Teamwork to Team Leading
teaming...leading to being a member

CRE8NG™ - Idea generation to Creative Solution Development
creative thinking & creative problem solving
plus...

CREATIVE IDEA GENERATION...
As a creative idea consultant I offer three related services individually or through virtual teams assembled specifically for clients:

generate ideas for specific problems or needs facilitate idea generation by or with my client's people train my client's people in one to many techniques for generating ideas.

Alan (Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP) is an International Creative Thinking Consultant and his consulting company is Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities. When not traveling the world, Alan calls Athens, Georgia home. As a consultant, coach, speaker and author, he helps people expand and enrich their natural creative abilities. Alan uses his 47 years of daily creative work experience at 47 different jobs in eight fields, along with his formal education: Ph.D. in creativity with E. Paul. Torrance, Ph.D., BS and 2 MA's in design and architecture, plus M.Ed. in counseling and educational psychology combined with 30 years of training workshops (3400 workshops to date) to provide: immediately useful tools, techniques and strategies using examples from his professional life and his ongoing collection of examples obtained from 30 years of study of the application of creative thinking in the workplace. He sees life, as a creative journey, not a guided tour. In addition to serving his many clients he has been on the faculty of a mix of executive development programs since 1980. Among his clients are many Fortune 500 to 1000 companies, professional associations, private medium size companies, colleges/universities, government departments and agencies plus many volunteer organizations. Since 1978 he has presented at creativity conferences around the globe and has served on the Board of the American Creativity Association, program team for the Creative Education Foundation's annual Creative Problem Solving Institute. To date he has spoken, traveled and researched in 73 countries on creative thinking and leadership in today's workplaces. He has authored and co-authored several books on creativity and leadership including, BROKEN CRAYONS, which has been translated and published in 5 countries: US, Turkey, Solvakia, Japan and South Africa. He also has had over 400 articles published.