About Us

Home for the CoOptimum team is Portland, Oregon USA, Earth.

Terry Lewis, Cofounder 

A “big-picture” guy, obsessed with optimizing interactions, and focused on sustainability (mostly possible due to my various first-world, white, hetero, middle-class, and other privileges...).

A short description of some pertinent history:

I grew up in a military-ish family (father in Naval Reserve). After receiving a degree in electronics engineering, and long before learning what I know now, I took a job working for a “defense” contractor in California. Sometimes outside the building where I worked, protesters would demonstrate against the weapons of war we were designing. I got to observe how my colleagues reacted to those protests, and the latter definitely weren't changing any of their minds.

My own mind, however, was increasingly changing during my 3.5 years at that job. Partly this was due to the friends I was making outside of work, and their influence on me. Most important were my experiences in the peer counseling world that I fortunately had begun engaging in, and which opened up my world view, and widened my understanding of human beings. I made the choice to walk away from that job (and occupation), and I have never looked back.

I consider quitting that job to be my first activist effort. My activism has continued and grown more involved since then, and I have worked on a non-unusual range of progressive efforts:

• antiwar
• children's rights and empowerment
• anti-nuclear power
• farmworker rights
• anti-violence efforts with respect to women
• LGBQTIA+ rights
• anti-nuclear weapons
• environmental protection, now including the climate crisis

My participation in these collaborative efforts has illuminated for me the challenges of interacting effectively and productively for people with the best of intentions! Sharing POVs on external issues was no guarantee that our internal (personal) issues would not interfere with our cooperating effectively!

My sources (and magnitudes) of income have been all over the map, the last one enabling me to semi-retire early (I conceived, designed, built, and operated a voicemail system for personal ads). My resulting free time allowed me to experiment with various ways of facilitating empowering interactions, culminating in the present version of CoOptimum.

In my spare time, I enjoy hiking in the woods, contradancing, and coming up with the best puns ever!

In the near future, I hope to share my point of view on how conditioned we have been (and are), leading us to compete when we could be cooperating. But right now my focus continues to be on facilitating self-determined, self-organized interactions. CoOptimum's website is a work-in-progress, and hopefully with your participation, we'll optimize your interactions. Please consider taking our survey about such optimized interactions.

If you are interested in exploring a cooperative interaction with me, email me, Terry@CoOptimum.org.
​

Kaye Blesener, Cofounder

Project manager
Business analyst
Editor and proofreader
Brainstormer
Problem solver
Financial wizard

In spare time: trombone player (3 bands), HOA treasurer, gardener


​

Nancy Wirsig McClure, Designer

Nancy is principal and founder of Explanagraphics, visual communications consultancy based in Portland, Oregon USA. She helps organizations share their ideas --  creating infographics, user interfaces, explanatory animation, and presentations.

Nancy's 20+ years of experience span design, online B2B marketing, technical communication, thousands of hours using Photoshop and Illustrator, and degrees in Computer Science and Anthropology.

She has presented at national conferences, Ignite events, and local user groups. She's taught college classes and corporate workshops.

Nancy consults on CoOptimum’s communications needs and then applies both left-brain and right-brain skills to storyboarding, design, illustration, and technically-perfect production. The results are the custom visuals and interfaces you see here.