These local ladies are creative, hardworking, humble, loving, and tenacious. Through the past year and some change, they have redefined what it means to persevere and innovate. They have been empowered, so they know what it means to take the time to empower others. The team at Loveland Lifestyle is honored to get to learn from their stories and we think you’ll be inspired, too.
Kelly Wisniewski
Kelly is a wife, sister, dog mom, introvert, and the owner of Remedy Skin Studio and Gateway Natural Medicine & Diagnostic Center. When a problem comes her way, she tries her best to see positivity in the situation. And, when she can’t, she creates it.
What do you do? What excites you most about your job?
I chose a career path that teaches women how to feel confident and beautiful, but not just in their outward appearance. I get a lot of patients that need a mental boost rather than just a physical boost, and I pride myself in providing a really safe, calm, and nurturing space for men and women to be able to come and take a deep breath.
I’ve known I wanted to do this since I was little. My mom would take me to the department stores when they gave you a free gift with purchase. She would give me all of the cool skincare and makeup things. I found how important it was to do self-care way back then. I knew I wanted to go into a path that was going to provide that for people.
How did you handle the struggles of the pandemic, both personally and professionally?
My personal business was deemed nonessential so I was closed from March until August. In our house, we give ourselves 24 hours of a pity party. You can do whatever you want in those 24 hours, but after that, you have to put your head down and game plan. For those months, I revamped my business on the backend. It gave me time that I wouldn’t normally have on a day-to-day basis to take my location to the next level.
I also created at-home facial kits that I would mail to clients. Then, they would get together with their friends, grab some wine, and I would do a Zoom where I showed them how to do a facial on themselves. At least they felt like they weren’t missing out on their routine, and that gave me purpose. For a hot minute there, I felt like I didn’t have a purpose since my purpose is always touching someone’s skin. I got to help my clients, and they helped me so that I wasn’t having never-ending conversations with my dogs.
Cindy Mackin
Cindy is the extremely energetic and passionately creative Visitors Service Manager for the City of Loveland. She does everything with an over-the-top extravagance— a quality she attributes to the many Disney trips her mom took the family on while she was growing up.
What excites you most about your job?
I feel like I have the best job in the world. It’s to promote Loveland as a visitor destination for tourists, meetings, events, and conventions. We’re not just a stop on your way to Rocky Mountain National Park— we’re a destination! I get excited about sharing my love for Loveland.
How did you handle the struggles of the pandemic, both personally and professionally?
This is my dream job, but it has been one of the hardest years for our team. It’s very hard to be in tourism when every message is telling you to not go anywhere. Our whole perspective was to turn a setback into a comeback. We wanted to position ourselves as a place people could go to when they could travel again— a dream now, visit later.
We are fully funded by the lodging tax and that budget dropped by 42 percent. So, we were limited. We had three goals: to be a resource for current data and information, to provide valuable content, and to support our community. Some of the ways we did that were by creating a big banner that said “we support our frontline workers”, we called all 200+ restaurants in Loveland to develop a dining guide, and we made special delivery goodie bags for our hotels and businesses.
Christina Bove’
Christina is a driven and curious veterinary cardiologist at Four Seasons Veterinary Specialists. Her passion is wellness and personal development, and she strives to create healthy environments for clients, animals, and herself.
What is your job, and what excites you about your work?
I am a veterinary cardiologist. We mostly get dogs and cats, with the occasional rare exotic animal. Cardiology works with all departments in the hospital, and I like that it’s a very collaborative job. I get excited about the challenge of the work. I like navigating through things such as a difficult arrhythmia with the goal of giving a pet the longest and happiest life possible with their family.
We are primarily a women staff at Four Seasons. There are 16 doctors, and 14 of them are women, including the two owners. We’re really focused on wellness here, and have even had a wellness coach who has talked us through topics like the high rate of depression amongst vets. I love it here because of the culture of empowerment and open communication.
How did you handle the struggles of the pandemic, both personally and professionally?
Veterinarians have been essential workers since the beginning. Obviously, we deal with pets, but we also deal with their owners. That required some strategy. We delivered services curbside and dove into telemedicine.
In general, I think veterinary medicine has been inundated with clients and pets. It’s a challenging time in general. A lot of people have lost their jobs and things like that, so we’ve worked hard with our clients to have compassion and ensure their pets can get the best help possible. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve really worked to find ways that we can better the community. Because of that, Four Seasons is doubling in size soon.
Lisa Melville
Lisa’s main motivation in life is to help people. This servant leader has a background in social work and currently serves as an independent associate at LegalShield. She doesn’t like recognition— and that’s one of the main reasons we want to give it to her.
What is your job, and what excites you about your work?
I work for LegalShield. It’s a monthly service that gives people access to quality legal services and attorneys without the high hourly rates that are typical of the field. Knowing that people are going to be able to get really great coverage for a low price is what excites me most about the job. Depending on the client’s needs, we help people get their kids, identity, rights, and money back.
It could be as simple as getting a contract reviewed. We recently helped a business owner find the best contract for her new building. Our services called her when she was about to step into a bad deal, and it saved her a lot of money.
We also have stories that are really crazy with the identity theft side. There was a teacher who got pulled over and arrested for prostitution— and it definitely wasn’t her. They had one number wrong on the license plate! She was in jail, and she’s a teacher, so we didn’t want that to get out! She was able to call our 24/7 attorneys and stay out of jail that night. They also helped restore her identity after the fact so she could keep her job.
How did you handle the struggles of the pandemic, both personally and professionally?
Luckily, the pandemic didn’t impact our company at all. Personally, I had to learn how to conduct meetings through Zoom to educate people about what LegalShield does. I did get used to my Zoom world, and now when I drive in traffic it gives me anxiety!
Chakel Palmer
Wherever she goes and whatever she does, one thing always defines Chakel- she is a lover of people. She is a wife, a mom of 2-year-old Jacob, and a travel agent who owns Simply Adventure, LLC. Her favorite place to travel is Hawaii, and she is passionate about seeing travel move from a transactional to a relational approach.
What is your job, and what excites you about your work?
I am a travel agent. Travel and culture have been a part of me from the time I was like six. Some of my first trips were when my grandparents flew my siblings and me to see them in Michigan in the summer. Now I’ve traveled to wonderful places like the Dominican Republic, Dubai, and Hawaii, and I’ve found that travel is an extension of loving people. It’s so exciting to see how other people live and see the world
How did you handle the struggles of the past year, both personally and professionally?
Travel is kind of a little wonky now, but that’s part of the fun. It’s all about finding out how we can give people what they’re looking for so that people can have their rest, refreshment, and adventure.
For the holiday season, I curated travel boxes as gift ideas for people who loved travel but weren’t able to go. I put together destination- or style-based gift boxes dependent on people’s price points. It was a way for people to get a taste of travel from home. It’s been a hard year for all the travelers!
This year was also crazy for me as the race relations stuff goes. It hit me, and I was like, I have a mixed son. He looks fairly light-skinned, but he’s got some curls! It was a jarring processing situation for me. I knew I couldn’t change the world, but I wanted to change my world so that my son wasn’t dealing with these same issues in 21 years. My mission to love people well and see them as image-bearers of God carries over into this.
Amy Tallent
Amy is a connector of people who has faith that every person comes into her life for a reason. She is a believer, wife, mother, businesswoman, and councilwoman.
What is your job, and what excites you about your work?
I’m a realtor. My favorite part is finding people homes that make their lives easier, peaceful, and restorative. I’ve moved 30+ times in my life, so I know that a home can make a huge difference if you pick the right one.
How did you handle the struggles of the past year, both personally and professionally?
Being confident in my identity helped me navigate the struggles of this year. Early on, I really spent time figuring out who I was and who I was created to be so that I didn’t waste time fighting against that. So many of us want to be everything to everybody, but everybody is not great at everything.
My husband and I own a marketing business as well. No matter what field you’re in, you have to roll with the punches. Your business has to continually adapt and change to fit the environment. Because we’ve been used to adapting, my husband and I have been alright during COVID. I really feel like there’s no challenge that is too big for the two of us to tackle. If I didn’t have a partner like I do in my husband, my life would be a lot more difficult.