Jackie's Bio
Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a husband, father, ghostwriter, activist, educator, and deep ecologist. Prior to entering the field of education, he studied the planets in our Solar System from one end to the other during a 20-year career in the U.S. space program. He discovered that there may not be a single drop of available fresh water or a breath of fresh air other than on Earth. Humans may one day live on other worlds, but the Earth will be always be our only true home.
From the age of five, he was excited about the heavens above and went on to study astronomy at the University of Southern California. After graduation, he got a job with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Project Voyager, a grand NASA mission to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with two spacecraft. It appeared that dreams were about to come true.
But a few years later, while on vacation in Yosemite National Park, Jackie somehow woke up to the realization that he had spent little time in his life contemplating the wonders of planet Earth. Upon returning home, he began studying about how the Earth worked and discovered that what little he knew about pollution, toxic wastes, and cruelty to our fellow creatures had been grossly underplayed to him in his reading and his studies. He found out that the Earth´s life support systems were headed for disaster.
After obtaining a Masters degree in Environmental Studies, Jackie continued to search for the right path for many more years. He began teaching adults returning to school in the late 1980´s and discovered that the knowledge he had about the toll our lifestyles were taking on the Earth was hard for folks to swallow. Looking for a way to share the awareness of the terrible harm we were doing the Earth to his students, he learned that many scholars felt that the profound disconnection from the natural world that modern city dwellers experience was a root cause for our terrible environmental and social abuses.
Studying these phenomena further became the subject of Jackie´s doctoral program and his focus on the fields of ecopsychology, ecofeminism, deep ecology, and bioregionalism, among others. With this unique collection of tools, Jackie began speaking to students, educators, and the public about the consequences of our separation from the cycles of the Earth. He developed the Deep Teaching Process, a collection of methods for teaching students to notice the powerful connections between the environment and people.
Jackie wrote a weekly column on the Internet called “Healing Our World” for the Environment News Service. Each week, he addressed environmental issues vital to our survival. His book "Healing Our World: A Journey from the Darkness into the Light", was born from this article series. Readers from all over the world write to him about how the over 350 commentaries he wrote affected their lives.
Continuing to work for NASA/JPL until 1998, Jackie left engineering and led the development of teacher training programs and student workshops in space and Earth science education. He has trained many business leaders, consulted to numerous organizations, and instructed educators in techniques of teaching critical thinking and learning skills.
For six years, Jackie worked for Microsoft Research, giving over 50,000 executives and world leaders over 2,700 tours of the Microsoft Envisioning Center and Home of the Future, giving demos and discussing future trends.
Jackie now spends full time ghostwriting, freelance writing, and writing content for a variety of subjects and settings. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife Lani, son Justin, step-son Forrest, two dogs and a number of fish.
Astronomy
Jackie spent 20 years working for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He started in 1977 on the Voyager Project, two amazing space probes that explored much of the Solar System. Voyager 1 explored the systems of Jupiter and Saturn while Voyager 2's trajectory allowed it to vist Uranus and Neptune after flying by Jupiter and Saturn.
Environmental Studies
Jackie has written extensively about environmental issues. His Healing Our World BLOG contains many of those writings. He wrote over 300 commentaries for the Environment News Service that can be found around the web. Jackie is also the Green Business reporter for Examiner.com, exploring environmental issues that affect businesses. He has also developed a number of discovery-based teacher training programs in Deep Ecology, Critical Thinking, Ecopsychology, and Multiple Intelligence Theory.
Technology Storytelling
For six years (2008 - 2014), Jackie worked with the Strategic Prototyping Team at Microsoft, giving tours of the"Microsoft Envisioning Center" in the Executive Briefing Center. In a simulated home, office, and outdoor environment, Jackie gave over 2,700 tours and discussions of future trends to C-level executives, high-level staff, and visiting dignitaries who were pursuing contracts and partnerships with Microsoft.
Critical Thinking
Teaching students with principles and techniques that foster critical thinking will create an atmosphere of excitement about learning in the classroom. With this approach, the emphasis in the classroom becomes one of fostering a deep connection with the course material as well as with the world around us. It is a powerful way to teach because it validates the native intelligence that we all possess.