women of achievement

Joy Overstreet

While Joy Imboden Overstreet admires people who focus on one particular mission for years, she has been more of a “Jill of all trades” who prefers to stick her oar into a variety of projects. When she sees something that is not working, she thinks, “Hey, I could do something about that.”

Born in Boston and raised in Westport, Connecticut, Joy was the oldest of three girls. Her parents, Fred and Jeanne Kimball, put a high value on education, the arts and community service. “We lived on a small farm outside of town,” Joy says. “We had no close neighbors and no TV. We read a lot, made up games, played music, and helped tend the sheep and the garden. I learned to be self-reliant – I’m never bored, even when I’m alone.” She attended Staples High School in Westport and Wellesley College, a women’s college near Boston, where the school motto, “Non ministrari sed ministrare” (“Not to be ministered unto, but to minister”) inspires her to this day.

Joy’s drive to become involved often comes from her own life experiences. Her first husband died of cancer at the age of 31, leaving her to raise two young children alone. The loss sent her into a depression which she tried unsuccessfully to soothe with food. When she discovered she was incapable of sticking to a diet she created a series of “mindfulness” exercises for herself around eating that became a new way of life for her, as well as a new business: Thin Within Seminars. At the time (the mid-1970s), the Buddhist practice of mindfulness was unheard of in weight loss circles. “I realized that dieting was like a BandAid; it didn’t resolve the emotional and behavioral issues of why and how we overeat,” Joy says. “I am an idea person, and when I find good news, like this new way of losing weight while increasing your pleasure in eating, I become an evangelist who wants to spread the word.”

Joy’s Thin Within experience led her to go back to school for a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley in order to learn more about how advertising, health policy and education affects personal behaviors such as eating, drinking, smoking and exercising. “So many health problems that plague us today are preventable. That’s why I think a public health perspective is so important; it gets at the root of the issue. ”
After getting her degree she created a nutrition training program for middle school teachers in Berkeley and worked with the school food service to improve the quality of the lunch program. Her interest in spreading the word about eating healthfully led her to become the food and health feature writer for the Berkeley Gazette. She soon branched out from there to write on health and family issues for national publications.

In 1992, Joy and her second husband, Martin, and their 9-year old son, Wylie, moved to Vancouver. Knowing no one, she plunged into volunteer roles at the YWCA of Clark County, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. She completed the Washington State University master gardener program and was a 4-H leader while home-schooling Wylie. Today she remains heavily involved in a variety of volunteer activities, mostly with the Unitarian church and Toastmasters, and she was a member of the 2006 class of Leadership Clark County.

Her desire to get at the root of an issue has led Joy to become a Precinct Officer for the Clark County Democrats, “because politics decide public policy.” Although her father was heavily involved in politics in Connecticut, she never shared his enthusiasm. “The 2004 election was a wakeup call. I realized voting was not enough,” she says. “If we want our democracy to thrive, we citizens must participate more actively.” Frustration spurred her to action. “She was tired of conservatives talking about their values as if nobody else had any,” Joy’s nominator wrote, “so she spearheaded the creation of workshops at her church to help people with more liberal views get better at articulating their values.” That in turn led her to found the Progressive Voices Toastmasters Club in 2005.

“My biggest inspiration is from seeing other people ‘get it’ – whether ‘it’ is that they can lose weight without dieting or that they can speak in public without fainting,” says Joy. “I like to see things progress and move ahead, to see positive change.”

As much as Joy’s work has positively impacted others, some of her most diverse accomplishments remain personal. She learned how to swim the butterfly stroke at the age of 43 – eight months pregnant. She enjoys building computers. She is an accomplished guitar picker, a fair fiddler and recently she learned to yodel. She is a certified feng shui consultant with a special passion for working with color. She is most proud, however, “of raising three fabulous children” – Heather, 38, Ethan, 35, and Wylie, 23.

She doesn’t rest on her past accomplishments, however. “Now it’s time to do what I can to leave our children and grandchildren with a livable planet,” she said. It is that lifelong commitment that makes Joy Overstreet a woman of achievement.