I started this company 23 years ago. It has been through a lot of changes: three names, three logos, the addition of new programs and new associates. The only thing that has stayed the same is our commitment to bringing quality personal safety and empowerment programming to our clients.
A Little History
Back in 1988, I volunteered on a rape and battering hotline. I took the Wednesday night overnight shift for about 18 months, receiving calls from women who had been assaulted. As a peer crisis counselor, it was my responsibility to listen to their stories and give them whatever support I could in the wake of such a dreadful event. The work was rewarding; nevertheless, I often felt powerless and came to realize that I preferred to put my energy into assault prevention rather than intervention: I wanted to reach women before they found themselves in a situation where they needed to call a hotline for support. I became a certified self-defense instructor and struck out on my own to establish Lauren Hines & Associates Assault Prevention Programs.
I started out teaching self-defense to teens and adult women through schools and companies. I soon began offering sexual harassment prevention trainings, assertiveness workshops, and advanced self-defense. Eventually, I added personal safety classes for elementary school students and hired qualified men to teach teen boys to avoid fights. In 2004, I changed the name of the organization to Esteem Self Reliance, Self Protection because that seemed to more clearly communicate what our classes really taught: independence and confidence. Because the issue of self-defense can bring up a lot of fear and anxiety, we needed a logo that would be welcoming and non-threatening to potential clients but still show that our trainings were experiential and gave participants hope and confidence. Therefore, the logo created to go with the name change was of universally recognizable bodies in joyous, confident motion. We eventually abbreviated the company name to simply Esteem.
I loved this logo for many years because it communicated that learning the proper response to something that terrifies people (the potential of assault) isn’t necessarily threatening but can even be thrilling: your body is your ally, and it’s wondrous to experience it!
Communication Matters
Eventually, after another decade of teaching with that logo and that fighting mindset, I learned something about self-defense and personal safety: personal communication is a key component in all physical conflicts.
In my years of teaching people of all ages, virtually every conversation about self-defense or personal safety gradually circled back to concerns about verbal and nonverbal communication.
With that in mind, I went back to school to earn my Master’s Degree in Communication, and developed my Master’s Project on the efficacy of nonverbal and verbal assertiveness in potentially violent situations. My findings were that women who present an authoritative persona through their body language and their verbal responses are more likely to successfully avoid assault. Moreover, those who fight back, even ineffectually, are statistically more likely to bring the assault to a timely end. Some of the women in the studies I researched had participated in physical self-defense training; some had not. But their communication approach (not their size, speed, or strength) was generally the most accurate indicator of how far the aggressor would succeed in inappropriately pushing limits.
That research inspired me to develop new training programs and to hire additional Esteem associates, most of whom are personal communication professionals. This expansion has helped me broaden my offerings beyond personal safety, to include trainings that all have something to do with self-esteem and the willingness and knowledge of how to protect and care for oneself: harassment and bullying prevention, assertiveness training, media literacy, body image awareness, listening skills, leadership styles, conflict resolution, and intercultural communication, just to name a few. The organization’s mission has grown as well. We now provide interpersonal communication solutions for everyone: children, teens, and adults.
The Change
We obviously needed a new look that reflected this new broader mission, establishing Esteem as the dynamic communication-consulting firm that we have grown to be. While we still value the joyous response participants have when they find that their bodies are their allies, not their enemies when under attack, we have more to say.
Having taught over 27,000 students by now, Esteem’s mission has shifted slightly to include all forms of communication, but I’m sure you’ll find the new logo communicates that same joyous sense of empowerment we started with.
For the logo design, I called on the creative genius, Marian Martino, of Martino Graphic Design. She is a responsive listener who was able to immediately understand our vision. She came up with the bright and engaging new logo that we are debuting here today:
I then enlisted the help of another very creative mind, Janise Roselle, Ph.D., who put this concept into practice on our website, including animations, images, fonts, colors, and the interactive nature of the site. I’m so thankful to both Marian and Janise for their knowledge and patience in helping me find the logo that communicates who we are and what we do. This logo helps us say that our goal has always been to avoid the fight: to find a way to help participants value and speak one another’s language—as our middle e’s do here in the new logo—and to enjoy it. Giving another person esteem and gaining their esteem is a wonderful thing, a call for joyous celebration, wouldn’t you agree?
The Future
For those of you who love our self-defense programming, fear not! We are still passionate about that work, and you will find it front and center on the new site, along with video of fights on several pages. We’ve simply grown to add more specializations with more specialists to teach them, and we continue to offer self-defense courses that are grounded in communication, talking about what scares us, working it through in role plays and succeeding. Esteem has reached over 27,000 participants with our dynamic trainings and we look forward to continuing our mission of creating interpersonal communication solutions for individuals, schools, and companies for many years to come. Toward that end, I invite you to check out the site here and leave a comment on the blog to let us know what you think. And please take an extra moment to forward the link to anyone you know who might benefit from our trainings. Thanks so much for all your support for all these years! It’s your belief and faith in our mission that carry us along through all transitions, and it’s your interests and concerns that inspire us to grow to meet your needs!
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