Background and Bio
Todd J. Courtney has lived in San Jose, CA most of his life. He has spent the past 25 years as a business owner and during the last 5 years, he was teaching what Wallace D. Wattles calls “thinking stuff” to business offices in San Jose. During this time of teaching, while raising three kids of his own and teaching them the same techniques, he realized his passion lies with helping our youth understand that they too can create the life they truly dream of.
While teaching adults for the prior 5 years, it didn’t take Todd long to realize why most of our youth get trapped in the same cycles as their parents, with the primary reason being that parents cannot teach their children what they don’t know or don’t understand themselves. After researching the teen and young adult market, it seemed a lot more work needed to be done to help our youth during this time of a rapidly changing world. Todd’s premise is this; “If we expect our youth to change the world, we have to start by changing our youth.”
In addition to his first book, “Thinking in One Direction”,Todd created TeensCanDream.org as a “go to” site for teens to find an array of short eBooks on a variety of topics, as they seek the answers to their individual questions. This site is dedicated to all the teens, pre-teens and young adults out there who are looking for answers, but didn’t have a single source to find them.
In addition, he and his wife, Jackie, created a new genre of rhymes, Max Rhymes, with the purpose of helping our youth during the early years of learning. Not stopping there and seeing how disease such as cancer, diabetes and obesity are affecting our youth at younger ages, Todd created the first ever animation video to help kids with leukemia think themselves healthy during treatment with their doctors. When asked, “Why leukemia? Does someone you know have it?” he responded with a, “No. It was just an idea in which I felt compelled to create.” With absolutely no experience on how to create an animation video, Todd explains in detail how things came about in divine order. For more information on his video go to, JustImagineIf.org.
Jacqueline “Jackie” was also raised in San Jose, CA and spent her career as a primary school teacher for 16 years before retiring to raise their children and embark on the journey of co-creating Max Rhymes with Todd. From her years in teaching her students, many of whom were from underprivileged families, Jackie saw firsthand for the need to empower children and provide them the self-confidence needed to grow up leading a satisfied and fulfilling life as an adult. In combining her passion for children and desire to make a difference, along with Todd’s research, the idea of creating a brand new series of board books for toddler’s was born. With most of our current nursery rhymes written over 200 years ago, the objective was to create something for the 21st century that would enhance children’s futures.
