Lili Sun and Mary Schilling-Lorio meet in Arizona, a friendship that paves the way for the development of the Hidden Potential Project.
Lili Sun was born in 1979 in Nan Chung, China and moved with her mother to the United States in 1994.
Mary grew up in Boulder, Colorado and studied the ‘Great-Books’ program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the fall of 1997, during the second year of her college studies, Mary entered a period of personal depression. This was mostly due to her lack of life direction, combined with a strong internal ambition that was unable to be fulfilled.
As Lili and Mary’s friendship grew, Lili explained that she was in the initial stages of developing a program that enabled young people to identify their natural talents and potential in life; to help give informed educational and career direction to young people. Mary immediately expressed an interest in becoming Lili’s case study.
Lili’s analysis of Mary revealed her potential was in the area of business management and leadership. The news was both exciting and inspiring to Mary. Over the next year, the two had numerous consultations to help Mary understand how to develop her management and leadership potential. During this time, Lili also began working with a small number of clients in Europe.
October 2000
Mary began employment as the General Manager of a luxury wellness center and conference venue in London, England.
Whilst in London, Mary met Joel Sutton at a local crafts market, where he ran a small business selling scarves imported from the Far East. Their conversation revealed that Joel too was an extremely ambitious individual, but had become deeply depressed, anxious and unhappy, as he too had no idea of which career path to apply himself.
Mary introduced Joel to Lili, who revealed that he had a strong potential in the area of sales and marketing. Joel shortly joined Mary working as a head of Marketing and Sales at the wellness center.
During the next three years, both Mary and Joel experienced career success in their respective fields of potential.
March 2003
Mary and Joel begin working closely with Lili to develop her services into a more complete and sophisticated system of education.
Learning from their own experiences and the experiences of Lili’s other clients, the trio soon realized that career success is not guaranteed simply by identifying one’s potential:
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They begin to understand that an individual must not only be aware of their strengths, but also their character weakness that will hinder them from reaching success, for example: fear, stubbornness, lack of persistence or lack of interest. They realized that it is essential for people to take active steps to develop their weaknesses in order to reach success in their field of potential.
They also discovered that it is important that the individual develops a clear understanding of who they are and what they really want in their life and that the career path they choose is ‘in-synch’ with those goals. Otherwise, if a person is not passionate or truly interested in the career they pursue, it is difficult to reach success and they will never feel truly happy or satisfied with their work.
They also discovered that it is important to have a broad understanding of the subject’s life –the importance of romance or relationships in a person’s life, the individual’s health condition and how the chosen career will influence their health and relationships.
Finally, they realized that they quickest and most effective way for people to develop in their career path is to ‘learn-by-doing’ through hands-on experience and the support of successful mentors and coaches.
During the next three summers, the trio runs a number of Hidden Potential programs together with non-profit organizations in Switzerland, England and Croatia. The success of these programs inspired them to pursue large-scale development of the program in the United States.
July 2006
Mary returns to Boulder, Colorado to begin work on a project proposal to bring Potential Education to young people in America.
In December, Joel, Lili and Mary come together in Florida to make the final touches on the project proposal and program details.
The Need