text:
When Shannon Galpin is on a bicycle, she knows where she is going — and how she is going to get there. This is a luxury she does not often have.
So on a sunny Monday in late spring, Galpin is determined to ride. At the start of one of her favorite paths in Golden, she removes her mountain bike — a custom-made, baby-blue single-speed that she built to accommodate her slender frame two years ago — from the trunk of her Honda Element, adjusts its 29-inch wheels, attaches her water bottle and loops one leg over its slim metal frame. As she looks up, shielding her fair face from the sun, she resembles a child whose parents have buckled her helmet, placed her on a bike and then, slowly, let her go.
But the truth is that Galpin, the 37-year-old founder of the Colorado-based nonprofit Mountain2Mountain, has pushed herself here — against the odds and occasionally against international protocol. In 2010, on a bike that differed from this one only in color, she became the first woman to cycle across the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan. There, an activity she performs routinely — with no shifting and no distractions — transformed into a symbol for her outreach efforts.
Shannon Galpin
"I constantly vacillate between realizing I'm making a difference and wondering if I'm ever going to make one," she says. "Sometimes when I get tired, I remind myself that I once rode across the desert. It usually helps."
Looking back — both at the past and over her right shoulder — she releases her grip on the brakes and starts pedaling.
During a particularly trying financial period, Shannon Galpin wondered if Mountain2Mountain, the organization she founded in 2006 and expanded to non-profit status in 2009, really had a future. While drafting her memoir, she decided to find out by looking back over its history. So she gathered the notes she'd scribbled on trips abroad, all 350 pages, and laid them out in chronological order. She spent the summer of 2011 revisiting her entire life: What was her story arc? Her climax? Her resolution? Based on past experience, Galpin knew her story was not Three Cups of Tea or Eat, Pray, Love — but then, what kind of story was it?
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It started as Pollyanna: Galpin jokingly compares herself to that wholesome Hayley Mills character. She grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, with an architect father, a stay-at-home mother and her younger sister, Larissa. At age five, she discovered modern dance — and by the time she was a teenager, she'd developed a fervent dislike of her home town, where there were few opportunities for a dancer. She left as soon as she could, auditioning for Minneapolis's Zenon Dance Company and then moving there at the age of seventeen, when she was offered an apprenticeship. She took a job at the Gap and studied tap, jazz and classical ballet with Zenon for a year.
And then she was raped.
After taking the bus home from work one night, Galpin got off at the wrong stop, a mistake that required a short trip through a city park. A few minutes into this unexpected walk, Galpin heard a man's voice and felt hands on her back. The stranger used his knife and weight to push her to the ground, where he raped her, cut her and abandoned her. "I am certain in my mind that he thought he had left me for dead," Galpin says. "For a few days, I felt like I was."
Instead of notifying either her family or the authorities, Galpin retreated into herself, hiding in her apartment for days and calling in sick to work until her cuts healed and her bruises paled. She never danced again. "I was afraid that if I told anyone, the rape would define me," she says. "I didn't just want to be the person who was raped." At the insistence of a friend, she finally reported the rape through a relay phone inside the police station; the police have never found her attacker.
And while she distanced herself emotionally from the experience, Galpin removed herself physically from its setting. She enrolled in a creative-writing course at the American University in Heidelberg, Germany. When she flunked, she got a job as a trip guide. That's how she met her future husband, a dashing British rafting guide named Peter Clark who accompanied her on a tour through Austria's Zell am See region. The trip lasted only three days, but they connected quickly. "I called him the next week and said, 'What if I came back?'" Galpin remembers. "So I did."
After two years and travels through several countries, the couple married on December 30, 1997, a commitment propelled as much by citizenship issues as by love. (Today, Galpin calls it a "necessary evil.") The newlyweds moved to Wales, where Clark worked full-time as an engineer with the European Space Agency and Galpin trained in sports therapy with a focus on preventive care. "I was so frustrated that everything was always reactive, which is my concern with nonprofits, too," she says, and sighs. "We don't fix the world until it's broken. I want to fix it first so that it doesn't get that far."
She saw a lot of the world over the next half-dozen years, as Clark's assignments sent them throughout Europe. But when Galpin's sister, who is ten years her junior, enrolled at Adams State College in Alamosa, she and Clark moved to Colorado so that Galpin could be closer to Larissa. The world travelers settled down in Breckenridge, where they bought a home. Galpin got a job as a trainer at the Vail Athletic Club, but soon was offered a six-month gig in Paris as a master trainer in Pilates. Clark didn't want her to go, but she took the job — and when the six months were up, she promptly took another in Beirut. "It taught me to be comfortable in cities with guns, because there were AK-47s on every street corner," Galpin remembers. "It began to teach me what I was capable of."
She and Clark grew apart as she became more confident. But they had made a deal: She'd stay off birth control when she returned to the States. Nine months later, on December 3, 2004, Devon Galpin Clark was born.
Galpin's travels were over, at least for a while, but she soon found other ways to stretch her horizons. She read John Wood's Leaving Microsoft to Change the World and Rory Stewart's The Places In Between. And then, along with much of the American reading public, she purchased Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson's account of his transition from professional nurse to co-founder of the humanitarian Central Asia Institute. "I became very attracted to his accomplishments, especially because he was not an expert, either," Galpin says. "He was just a regular person, too, and I began to realize that a Pilates teacher living in Colorado could also become part of that. I saw a place for myself."
For more than a year, even as she continued her work as a wellness instructor, she helped raise funds for Mortenson's nonprofit from her home in Breckenridge. After one local fundraiser to benefit the Central Asia Institute raised more than $100,000 for women's schools in Pakistan, Galpin began thinking about creating her own organization, one targeted toward the issue of women's rights — which she always refers to as "human rights." The push to make it a reality came in 2006, when Larissa called to make the announcement that Galpin never had: She'd been raped.
As Galpin listened to her sister, the guilt struck her hard. "I felt like maybe if I had just told her, it would have prevented the same thing from happening to her," Galpin says. "I know that's unreasonable, but it spurred something. I always had a wall up, and I was unwilling to be vulnerable."
And in that haze of emotion, Galpin's life suddenly changed directions. "I had to do something, but I knew only a few things for certain: I wanted to work with women who felt like victims, and I wanted to work in the place that was named the worst for them to live," Galpin says. "It was a leap of faith. I think out of everyone, the change surprised me the least."
That place was Afghanistan, a country she'd never even visited.
The first step was to go there. Once Galpin realized she could not purchase her ticket online, she talked with a friend, a National Geographic photographer who lives in Boulder and had worked in Afghanistan on assignment. Her friend recommended a travel agent who arranged round-trip airfare to Kabul for $1,600. "My goal on that first trip was to ignore preconceptions as much as possible," Galpin remembers. "It was not to start a mission."
Following her friend's suggestion, Galpin hired a translator named Najibullah Sedeqe for this first trip — and many since. Through him, Galpin met Dr. Massouda Jalal, Afghanistan's former minister of women's affairs, who ran against Hamid Karzai for the country's presidency in 2004. That was just Galpin's first interview out of more than thirty over the next three weeks, as she met with women involved in as many areas as possible.
On her second day in the country, Galpin toured an Afghan prison, where she met women jailed without trial, women who had never taken a single class and women permanently deformed by marital "spats." A few days later, she discussed the country's high rate of maternal deaths during childbirth with a local doctor. And all through her travels, she developed a network of Afghan aid workers and international ex-pats who'd also somehow found their way to Afghanistan.
For most of the trip, Galpin's protective guide stayed by her side, locking the doors of his Toyota Corolla the second she was strapped in, unlocking them only after they'd arrived at their destination, and never letting her leave his sight. For good reason: Galpin is tall and blond, with blue eyes lighter than a Tiffany's box, and she is trusting. Sedeqe made sure she traveled in convoys and stayed in compounds.
With one exception: On one of her last days in Afghanistan, an Australian photojournalist offered Galpin a ride through Kabul on his motorcycle. "He asked me if I was allowed," Galpin says, frowning at her friend's joke, "and I was like, 'Am I allowed? Am I allowed? I'm going to do this.'" Without telling Sedeqe, Galpin straddled the bike and sped through the city where she had yet to take a walk unaccompanied. Her friend took her up to the mountains, where she looked down on Kabul...and her future.
"It all hit me at once," she remembers. "This was where I had to work."
Back in Colorado, Galpin considered all the needs she'd encountered in Afghanistan — as well as her drastically diminished bank account — and weighed the difference between what looked good and what would actually do good. "My biggest hate is to be called naive, to be criticized for believing change can happen," Galpin says. "I was naive, though, before I realized how much money talks, how integral that chicken-versus-the-egg model is."
She worked on a structure and financial plan for her proposed nonprofit, built a six-member board of directors and a six-member advisory board, and then in 2008 filed the 501(c)(3) paperwork for Mountain2Mountain, which she named after an Afghan proverb: "No matter how high the mountain, there is always a road."
Once she'd decided on her own road, she was committed. Galpin soon closed her wellness studio, told her husband she wanted a divorce, sold him half of their house and listed her Subaru Impreza online. "I'm kind of an all-or-nothing person, unfortunately," Galpin says. And she was going to do it all on her own. "I didn't like Western organizations coming in and saying what to do, and I wanted the focus to be on using Afghan ideas to assist Afghan people," she explains. "The goal is to be a proxy for these women until they have their own voice, not to just sit there and pretend to be their voice."
From the start, Galpin was determined to avoid what she calls "Band-Aid activism," which she avoided by taking on only those projects that could continue without her. "In general, Afghans respect people who are willing to engage them fully, people who are willing to eschew a lot of the security theater that surrounds most of the international community there, people who meet them in their homes and villages instead of calling them into heavily fortified compounds," says Una Moore, an independent consultant on international development projects who met Galpin in Kabul. "Shannon really gets the idea that for any development to work in Afghanistan, the expats have to be in the background as opposed to out front. You can't implement projects that are just being dreamt up in major cities in the West."
Working in Afghanistan is like sifting through quicksand: The politics change every week. One of Mountain2Mountain's most ambitious early projects stemmed from Galpin's first trip there and her conversation with the doctor over the high rate of maternal deaths in childbirth. For months, Mountain2Mountain organized a program dedicated to teaching women in rural villages midwifery skills, right before Afghan political administrators updated the country's health regulations, effectively killing the project.
In 2009, Mountain2Mountain finalized the paperwork to start a school for the Afghan National Association of the Deaf, which, when finished, will be worth eight times Mountain2Mountain's current annual budget. Three years later, though, there is only the foundation of a building. "Shannon's goals are incredible, but the Afghan people look at results," Moore says. "It is one thing to say you will create change in Afghanistan and another thing entirely to do that. Shannon knows this more than most."
Another early effort targeted women's prisons, where it's not uncommon for the inmates' children to live with them. Over several trips, Galpin visited five facilities to decide whether the nonprofit's focus on women's rights should be stretched to include prisons. In March 2010, wearing a tightly wrapped burqa, accompanied by a handful of male escorts and a small video camera, Galpin entered the women's prison in Kandahar.
Through an interpreter, inmates told her of the "moral" crimes they'd been accused of committing. "I met this woman, the fifth wife of a 65-year-old man, who was twenty, married at sixteen and beaten, with knife wounds all over her body," Galpin recalls. The woman had been accused of attempting to murder one of her stepsons, and the resulting prison sentence actually presented an escape. "Before she got there, she was already imprisoned in her own life. I realized I could do nothing for them," she says.
After a day of interviews, as Galpin headed for the exit, the women presented her with a token: a jeweled barrette that Galpin often holds but never wears. When she tried to refuse the gift, a prisoner brushed out Galpin's hair and clipped the barrette in. For the second time in her life, Galpin says, she felt completely helpless.
She's felt that way often in the days since, as she contemplates the enormity of the work that needs to be done in Afghanistan.
And as she tests the durability of Mountain2Mountain, Galpin continues to test herself. At the same time that she was launching the nonprofit, she took up mountain biking. Between trips to Afghanistan and rounds of fundraising, she rode with friends, trying to figure out a way to connect her primary form of recreation with her all-consuming cause.
She started a Mountain2Mountain biking team, which occasionally competes in races to earn pledges for the nonprofit. In 2009, she took her bike to Afghanistan, where she rode it through a few rural villages. And then she came up with a grand plan: To raise funds for and awareness of Mountain2Mountain, she would ride across Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, where few women traveled and certainly none rode bicycles.
In the fall of 2010, she took apart one of her Niner bikes, checked it on a plane bound for Afghanistan, then rebuilt it and rode it across the desert for two days and ninety miles, all the while looking at the message printed on its frame: "Pedal, damnit!"
"It just struck me as this way to gain attention and sponsors while also furthering our goal of promoting women's rights," Galpin says. "It wasn't like, 'Hey, look at me, I'm a woman riding a bike where I'm not supposed to,' as much as, 'Hey, you're women, too, and you can do this, too. And maybe let's do this together."
She was accompanied by three male companions and propelled by financial commitments from supporters in Portland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., among other places. As they pedaled through the Panjshir Valley, pacing water and food intake, Galpin looked at the faces of the locals her group encountered. Were those looks of curiosity or animosity? Was it offensive to them, these people on bicycles, this woman on a bicycle, or just surprising?
In order to pedal farther inland without a police escort, Galpin's team bribed officers to allow the group through. As they cycled into the sun, Galpin recalled stories of snipers on the cliffs overhead. And on what would become the final day of the trip, they encountered a goat herder who uttered a warning Galpin could not understand. But they felt immediate tension, she remembers.
Through her Panjshiri translator, Galpin finally got the message: "No. No. Do not go through here. They have guns." On the other side of the pass, Nuristanis from a neighboring province carried weapons, and though the group did not know if they were targets, they knew they were unprotected. After a short deliberation, Galpin made the decision to travel one more hour to the final open space on their route, a grassy field in the middle of the desert. There the trip ended early.
"I cried, took out the barrette and tried to absorb both the disappointment and the accomplishment," she says. "In a really soppy, Pollyanna way, I felt like the women of Kandahar prison were there, even if only in spirit."
In October, she plans to try to cross the Panjshir Valley again. And in the meantime, a domestic Panjshir tour that benefits Mountain2Mountain has expanded to 25 cities this year and attracted more than 1,000 cyclists.
Each time Galpin visits Afghanistan, she develops more ideas — but her time in the United States is rarely as productive. "You can visually watch her think, but you can't keep up," says Mountain2Mountain boardmember Barry Reese. After six years, Galpin remains Mountain2Mountain's only full-time employee. The organization's budget for this year is $100,000 — and Galpin is still owed $30,000 for past personal expenses.
But the situation should change at the end of 2012. This past January, when Galpin was struggling with health issues — a bleeding ulcer — the board voted unanimously to refocus on smaller, grassroots efforts. And Reese had a frank talk with Galpin: "I asked, 'What happens if the last straw happens and it collapses? Do you want to go back to being a Pilates instructor, or would you join another NGO?'"
Galpin has thought about this many times. "If I concede to defeat at some point, it would all still be worth it for the lives we have changed so far," she says. "It would be frustrating that the roadblocks weren't war or conflict or discrimination or law, but money. That seems like a shitty reason to not be able to make change."
Today, Mountain2Mountain's list of outreach programs includes a literacy daycare system for the children of incarcerated mothers. To encourage free speech and educate women in the arts, Mountain2Mountain has also partnered with Afghan artists to teach youth how to create graffiti. The group has sponsored community concerts, organized art shows that partner artists in the United States and Afghanistan, and donated computers to a women's school where students had never seen them. To make this last project work, organizers brought in a back-up generator to guarantee power and spent hours teaching the students the most basic computer skills. This summer, Mountain2Mountain will launch Internet cafes in Jalalabad and Bamyan, two cities where electricity is sporadic or non-existent.
"We don't do sticks and bricks," explains boardmember Gareth Glaser. "We don't build buildings and put names on them and then have them taken away. The only way that Mountain2Mountain succeeds is through developing partnerships with local institutions."
While all of that work takes place at the grassroots level, those roots are more than 7,000 miles away, and donors have fallen prey to Afghan fatigue. "They don't see anything beyond footage of turbans, Taliban riding in the backs of pickup trucks, and firefights in Kandahar and Helmand and Ghazni," Moore says. "They see helicopters landing in military bases and hotels on fire in Kabul and lots and lots of armed men running. They see this immutable black-hole wasteland of violence and terrorism and war."
So Galpin pitches potential. "People want to invest in hope," she says. "They don't want to invest in pity and misery."
At the same time Mountain2Mountain has refocused its efforts in Afghanistan (a 2011 Thomson Reuters poll confirmed that Afghanistan is the most dangerous country in the world for anyone with two X chromosomes, worse than the Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia), it has also expanded its vision. This fall, through a new program called Combat Apathy, Mountain2Mountain will push projects in Cambodia, Mexico and Denver; next year it hopes to move into Israel, New York and Los Angeles. The three-stage educational experiment will partner young Americans between the ages of 16 and 22 with those in international conflict zones through citizen journalism and volunteer social-work projects. In the first stage, participants will publish personal stories through Mountain2Mountain's website and social media, with the hope that they will connect through the geography-free Internet.
And then the participants in the two communities will meet to create a project of their choosing, what Galpin calls a "social impact program" dedicated to an issue such as human trafficking, community violence or drug use. Although the specifics of the first pilot program won't be released until fall, it will unite Denver and Mexico City on the topic of trafficking.
To launch Combat Apathy, Mountain2Mountain will ramp up its fundraising efforts; its board of directors voted to increase the annual budget to $500,000 and hire four more full-time staff members, all of whom will be based out of Denver's Greenhouse Project start-up space.
The board has determined that the only way Mountain2Mountain can attain its goals is to grow. But in order to make Combat Apathy work, the group will have to fight apathy here at home. "You don't get someone to give you $20,000 because you're the good guys," Reese says. "You get it through results — and through people like Shannon. We have to believe in her."
In an average year, Galpin spends twelve weeks outside the United States. After a month in Afghanistan, she'll devote three months to fundraising here. While she is away, Devon stays with her father, who lives only a few miles across the highway. When she is home, she teaches Devon to care for her puppy — a twelve-week-old Saint Bernard who was originally named Phoenix, after the bird in the Harry Potter series, but is now called Bear — and attempts to explain the world's problems in first-grade language.
"Devon used to think, 'Mommy builds schools,' because I would show her photos of schools with outdoor classrooms where students are learning off of a piece of plywood," Galpin says. "Then in preschool, we printed out all of her favorite photos of me abroad, and I made a map of Afghanistan and helped her put the photos all around it on a tri-fold science-fair board. I brought it in to her preschool class, and they tried on burqas and hats and thought about if they had to wear them every day."
In her bedroom, Devon keeps two piggy banks on the dresser; in one, she collects money for herself, in the other, for the kids in her mom's photos.
From the front door to the living room of their home, a long white hallway is covered with a series of travel maps and a collection of color-coded Post-its that Galpin uses to structure her business plans. In the kitchen, seven-year-old Devon pens a novella in front of her own list of chores, which is tacked to the fridge. She soon presents Galpin with her masterpiece: The Book of Numbers, All the Way to Number 697, by Devon Galpin Clark.
Galpin has written her own book, which grew out of the project she started last summer, but Devon will not know the full story of what her mother is doing in Afghanistan until she is at least ten, Galpin says. Devon has come close to learning too much a few times, though. When Galpin was driving the school carpool one day (although she sold one car to fund Mountain2Mountain, she's since bought another used car that she's still paying off), one of the older kids asked her if she'd ever seen any bombs abroad; fortunately, Devon didn't hear the conversation. "He's only two years older than Devon," Galpin says. "It's hard to keep everything from her, but we have to for a while. She doesn't know I'm gone unless I tell her that I'm not in Breckenridge."
Galpin definitely has her critics, who call her "polarizing" and "hammer-headed." In launching her own nonprofit, Galpin bluntly abandoned the traditional route and fashioned her own model through trial and error. Some point to her unorthodox mothering schedule to rebuke her more brazen methods of diplomacy: If she really cares about women, why doesn't she spend more time with her daughter? But to question her concept of family, the strongest element in her story, is a mistake, Galpin says.
Family is everything, even if her finances are so tight that she regularly needs to choose between groceries and her cell-phone payment. Last year, during a trip to her local City Market to buy dinner, her bank account reached a low of $20, forcing her to decline Devon's request for gummy vitamins.
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"How pathetic is it to not be able to get your daughter vitamins?" she asks. "But then I realize that, for me, this project is as much about her future as theirs. Why should she have to live in a world where women are less? I'd hope I'm teaching her, if nothing else, to care."
Back in Golden, Galpin steps off her bicycle and stretches her arms and legs before turning her attention to her Niner. She removes its front wheel and packs both pieces into her car, making sure to leave room for Bear, who's been waiting inside his padded kennel.
Galpin checks on his water supply, then her own, releasing a long breath and chugging from her bike bottle. "If I didn't appreciate water before, I certainly learned to in Afghanistan," she says.
She takes a deep breath: "Of course, I've learned a lot of things there."


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In 2012 two new fee disclosure regulations will take effect for 401(k) and similar retirement plans. These new regulations were issued and will be enforced by the Department of Labor (DoL) and the IRS.
The first to go into effect requires plan sponsors to evaluate mandated disclosures from their service providers. The second requires plan sponsors to make certain other disclosures to employees and plan participants. These regulations are intended to result in better decisions by plan sponsors and participants through completeness and greater clarity of information.
The response from the industry to these new regulations has varied widely, largely driven by the interests and motivation of the firms involved. Many firms have focused on supporting the goals of the regulations while others seek ways to circumvent them.
Advisors who are educated about these regulations and practices are in a position to guide clients through the maze of new requirements and defeat the efforts to circumvent their intent.
Certain firms treat the new fee disclosure regulations as being no different from previous experiences, but many others recognize fundamental differences that will reshape the retirement industry during the next decade. Consider some of the differences:
Existing methods cannot be used to comply since regulations require that plan sponsors affirmatively evaluate the sources they usually rely on for compliance. Current sources are therefore disqualified and plan sponsors must find new ways to comply.
The new regulations involve multiple communications with an estimated 72 million people. No other retirement regulation has ever affected so many people, not even Social Security. With all this activity it takes only a tiny percentage to cause big waves.
For the first time plan sponsors have a credible recourse if service providers are not forthright with fees and expenses charged to the plan. New regulations provide a vehicle to report service providers to the DoL/IRS. Plan sponsors can now leave it to the government to prosecute errant service providers.
Detection of failures to comply is virtually certain for any plans that are audited. Past audits could not deal with reasonableness because there were no specific rules to enable examination. Additionally, there is expected to be so much press that large numbers of plan sponsors will understand the requirements. There will be nowhere to hide.
New regulations and the threat of penalties give aggressive competitors the opportunity to win business from incumbents who are lax regarding the new regulations. Competitors will use every opportunity to win business.
The largest category of responses is broadly described as denials. Some firms deny the onset of a fundamental change. They are often motivated by the desire to maintain the status quo in which plan sponsors and participants are blissfully unaware of the compensation being paid for the services received.
Denial is often evidenced by the argument that fees are not hidden and that plan sponsors and participants know what fees are paid. This argument is contradicted by vast amounts of research and the fact that fees are presented in a way that makes it difficult if not impossible to answer the simple question, "What is the cost?" with a single dollar figure. For the most part, fees are hidden in plain sight!
Just as concerning is the assertion that plan sponsors need not act on the disclosures received. This view is based on the false assumption that plan sponsors and participants currently have a process in place to evaluate the fees paid for services to the plan, arguing that if evaluations are currently being done, then no further action is necessary. Unfortunately, there are very few cases where evaluations required by ERISA regulations are being performed. Furthermore there are very few plan sponsors who even know what all the requirements are.
Deception is far more insidious than denial, but fortunately occurs less frequently. In this case firms deliberately misinterpret regulations for plan sponsors, omit requirements or make disclosures difficult to use.
Frequent misinterpretations include defining which firms or relationships are covered by the regulations or that no disclosures are required for non-participating employees. In some cases these interpretations are needlessly burdensome, while in others can result in non-compliance.
The most frequently omitted requirements are plan sponsor duties and liabilities. For example, under the regulation, a prohibited transaction occurs if a plan sponsor fails to receive a proper disclosure or fails to make disclosures to participants and eligible employees. Also often omitted is the regulation that permits the plan sponsor to exempt itself by reporting the service provider failure to the DoL/IRS.
Yet another frequent deception is presenting disclosures in an unusable form. With this deception, the service provider takes advantage of a labyrinth of exceptions and work-arounds to create unintelligible disclosures. Regulations require that disclosures are usable so this approach clearly violates the intent.
Threats in various forms await firms that deny or deceive with respect to fee disclosure. Discovery of denials or deception can seriously damage the image and reputation of a firm, thus creating the potential of losing existing clients and failing to win new ones. Discovery can also lead plan sponsors to initiate regulatory action by filing complaints against service providers.
The threat of discovery can arise from a variety of sources, but primarily: (1) competitors that target clients of firms known to use poor disclosures, denials or deceptions; (2) participant reaction that causes plan sponsors to examine the service and take action that injures the service provider; (3) plan auditor's discovery of compliance failures that can be traced back to a service provider.
Threats also exist where compensation is out of line with the services provided and in cases where services are considered to be expendable. Revenue losses can be expected once plan sponsors become aware of what level of compensation is paid for such services.
The poor response to fee disclosure regulations by certain firms creates opportunities for well intentioned service providers and advisors to enhance their own business.
Service providers can take advantage of new regulations to:
- Create an image of openness and support for plan sponsors & participants;
- Capitalize on the required disclosure communication to deliver their firm's marketing messages;
- Reposition fee disclosure as enhanced employee benefit;
- Replace existing plans and features with more desirable alternatives;
- Use fee disclosure as a business retention and acquisition tool.
Advisors who become trained in fee disclosure can:
- Increase the level of trust, respect and appreciation for the importance of the advisors role;
- Discover which service providers are in denial or are being deceptive and keep clients informed;
- Provide new fee disclosure service for a fee or as a value-add to existing service;
- Use fee disclosure as a tool to win new business.
Louis S. Harvey is president and CEO of Dalbar, the financial services market research firm.

subset: commoncrawl


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Add a basket and handle to the rear of a StyleView Cart, SV40. Keep task-related items where they can be quickly accessed.
- Stores a wide variety of task-related items where they can be quickly identified and accessed
- Smooth plastic surface and perforated base make it easy to clean and prevents dust collection
- Robust design ensures many years of service
- Mounts at any height on rear of cart to accommodate workflow


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Oleksandr Zinchenko would savour FA Cup final success as much as Manchester City's Premier League title win.
The Ukrainian is poised to play in Saturday's Wembley showpiece against Watford, when City will bid to complete an unprecedented domestic treble.
Some may feel the FA Cup has lost some of its glamour in recent times, but, for Zinchenko, it still ranks very highly.
The 22-year-old, who has emerged as City's first-choice left-back despite it not being his preferred position, said: "It's an unbelievable feeling to be honest, to play at that stadium in the final and to go to fight for a title. A final is always special and we can't wait for that.
"For me when I was younger the cup was just as important as the Premier League. I don't know how other players think about it, but for me it's like this.
"I would dream of playing at a high level. I didn't realise that I would be here and getting ready for an FA Cup final. It's a dream."
Despite chasing the Premier League and Champions League, Pep Guardiola's City have also taken the domestic cups seriously this season and were in contention for a quadruple until last month.
They began their FA Cup campaign with a ruthless 7-0 demolition of Rotherham in January.
Zinchenko said: "I think the Rotherham game was about scoring that first goal and then we built this rhythm and managed to score more goals. I think the whole team have put in good performances ever since then.
"In every single game we played this season, especially in the cup, we have showed who we are as a team and we have done it well."
City have beaten Watford in all eight of their meetings since the Hornets returned to the top flight in 2015, including a 5-0 and a 6-0 win at Vicarage Road.
Yet that will all count for nothing as Javi Gracia's men look to deny City in their shot at history.
Zinchenko said: "Watford have very good players, especially up top. Their manager and the way they play – I like it.
"It's going to be tough against them, I'm sure of that, but I think every single game our target is to show everyone who we are."
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Home >> Course Descriptions >> A.R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business
Issues in Information Systems
Three semester hours.
Examines state of the art technology and issues related to the analysis, design, implementation, and control of information systems. Includes a significant project. May be repeated once when the topic changes. Prerequisite: MIS 3310.
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U.S. Adoptions Fueled by Guatemalan Kidnappings
Demand for Guatemalan Children Is So High, Baby Snatching Is Rampant
By HAROLDO MARTINEZ and RUSSELL GOLDMAN
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala
Two years ago, Raquel Par boarded a bus in her hometown of Tecpan, Guatemala, with her baby daughter for the 90-minute ride to the country's capital.
When she arrived in Guatemala City, however, she was alone.
"I took a bus that left me at Bolivar Avenue, where I had to wait to catch another one. In the meantime, I met a woman that was also waiting for the bus and she began chatting with me and my little girl. After a few minutes, she began to talk about God, and I trusted her. She offered to buy me a drink, and when I accepted, she went to a nearby store. She came back a few minutes later with a soda in a plastic bag and I drank it. Soon, I started to feel dizzy," Par told ABCNEWS.com.
"When I regained consciousness, my little girl was gone."
Children are big business in Guatemala, where international adoption is estimated to be a $100 million industry, making orphans the country's second-most lucrative export after bananas.
With tens of thousands of dollars to be made on the sale of each child, and with little government regulation, a fertile black market has developed to sell children all over the world, especially the United States.
Children are routinely kidnapped and parents regularly coerced to sell their children, say government officials and human rights activists.
One in every 100 Guatemalan children is adopted by an American family, the highest per capita adoption rate in the world, and 95 percent of all Guatemalan children who are adopted go to the U.S. The U.S. State Department says approximately 29,400 Guatemalan children have been adopted by Americans since 1990, and local sources peg the average cost at $30,000 per child.
"The agencies deceive Americans looking to adopt. They guarantee them a healthy baby and then ask for money to help the mother, money for the lawyer, money for the bureaucracy. It can cost $50,000 for a couple to adopt. The main winners are the lawyers and the gangs that kidnap children. It's a real mafia," said Norma Cruz, director of the women's rights group Sobrevivientes (Survivors) Foundation, which has brought 15 members of kidnapping gangs to the police in the past six months.
American families adopted 4,728 Guatemalan children last year, according to the State Department, second only to the number of orphans coming from China.
Guatemalan Government Steps In
In January, the Guatemalan government implemented a new law and temporarily suspended adoptions following the high-profile raid of the Casa Quivira orphanage last August. In the raid, 46 children intended for American families were seized by Guatemalan government officials, and at least five women were found who had been issued false identities to obscure their true relationship to the children they delivered to the orphanage.
Neither the U.S. State Department nor Guatemalan officials would estimate the number of kidnapped children who end up adopted by American families, but Cruz estimates it could be as many as 50 percent of all U.S. adoptions of Guatemalan children.
Last week the Guatemalan government said it would investigate and put on hold each of the 2,286 pending international adoptions, of which nearly half are missing proper documents or include other irregularities, according to Associated Press interviews with the Guatemalan attorney general.
The government's new focus on pending international adoptions offers little solace to Par. Human rights investigators believe her daughter was adopted by an American family more than a year ago.
Last week, Par and three other mothers of kidnapped children began a hunger strike outside the presidential palace.
Daughter Tracked by Investigators
For days after Par's daughter, Heidy — then 1 year old — went missing, Par visited every police station she could to file a report. Three months later, with pressure from the Sobrevivientes Foundation, police found the kidnapper. Soon after, they believe they found documents that confirm the girl, who turned 3 on May 1, was adopted by an American couple.
Six months ago, Sobrevivientes investigators and a team from the Guatemalan national police department found a passport and adoption documents, issued by the Migration Department, to a girl Heidy's age under a different name.
Investigators recognized the girl in the passport photo. It was Heidy.
The foundation would not reveal the name or location of the American family that they believe adopted Heidy, because the investigation remains active. The Guatemalan government is overseeing the investigation, and Par has given a DNA sample in an effort to confirm her maternity.
Cruz said the case could soon be closed and Par reunited with her daughter. The American couple, like many who adopt from Guatemala, likely believed they were dealing with a reputable agency and had no idea the baby had been kidnapped, according to Cruz.
International Adoptions Dip
On the whole, international adoptions by American parents have been slowly declining over the past four years. There were 23,000 babies adopted from foreign countries in 2004, and just 19,613 in 2007, according to the State Department.
Adoption rates have fallen as traditional source countries, like Cambodia, have banned international adoptions outright, and others, like South Korea, have encouraged domestic adoptions.
But the opposite is true of U.S.-Guatemala adoptions.
With fewer options available to them, Americans have, in the same period, increasingly turned to Guatemala. Orphan visas issued to Guatemalan children rose from 3,262 in 2004 to 4,728 in 2007.
In Guatemala, a national industry has developed around adoption, with specialty lawyers offering their services, and hotels catering to the thousands of American couples who visit for the sole purpose of finding a child.
As a result, the measures kidnappers have taken to get a piece of the action have become increasingly brazen.
'There Was Nothing I Could Do'
"My daughter, Angely Lisset Hernandez Rodriguez, was kidnapped as I was entering my home," said Loida Rodriguez, one of the mothers on hunger strike outside the offices of Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom. "A woman appeared in my backyard and grabbed her out of my arms. There was nothing I could do."
Rodriguez's daughter was taken from her a year ago and would be 3 years old now.
She said police were indifferent to her case and offered virtually no help in finding the kidnappers.
Rodriguez still does not know the fate of her daughter or if she ended up in an orphanage.
Incidents of kidnapping, government officials hope, will decline, now that the country is implementing the Hague Convention on Adoption, an international treaty that sets guidelines for adoptions. Guatemala also passed its own adoption law in January.
"Under the law, adoptions are not supposed to produce a profit for anybody," said Nidia Anguilar Del Cid, an official in the office of the government's human rights ombudsman.
"The money for an adoption is only supposed to go toward legal costs and bureaucratic paperwork, which doesn't cost anywhere near the $50,000 some lawyers have charged."
For the past 28 years, private lawyers have handled the adoptions, but when the ban is lifted sometime next year, the government will play an increased role in ensuring children are properly vetted.
Much like Guatemala, the U.S. only recently ratified the Hague Adoption Convention, despite being a longtime signatory. As a result, Americans will only be permitted to adopt through agencies accredited by a national organization and registered with the State Department. Prior to the U.S. implementing the treaty early this year, there was no national organization which vetted or tracked the agencies, which find Guatemalan orphans for American families.
"The Council on Accreditation has been designated by the Department of State to be the sole national accrediting body for agencies in the U.S. involved with children from countries that are also signatories to Hague. To date, we have accredited 195 adoption service providers and 64 providers are still in the process," said Richard Klarberg, president of the council.
"Before [the council] began accrediting agencies there was no way to know if an agency was legit," he said. Agencies that pair parents with children from countries that have yet to join the convention still do not need accreditation, which means, according to Klarberg, "children from one country are more closely vetted than those from non-signatory countries. There's a double standard."
Despite greater government intervention, for American families looking to adopt and the agencies that represent them, the first line of defense to ensure children have not been kidnapped, are the local orphanages.
Mirna Velazquez is director of the Children's Home, an orphanage that was established in Guatemala City 32 years ago, and which, she says, carefully vets all the children who are brought to its gates.
"We guarantee the origins of all the children we put up for adoption. We will not accept a child bought directly from a mother or relative, but only those placed here by the courts," she said.
Adoptions can go forward legally and in the best interests of the birth mother, child and adoptive parents, said Cruz. But not without cracking down on the black market.
"The dark side of these adoptions is the fact that, a noble process intended to help children and allow couples to achieve their dream, has been denigrated and transformed into a market where children are treated like merchandise and gangsters are made into millionaires. We cannot continue to export our babies like fruits and animals or any other product. This is shameful."
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By Dan Crummett
New technology doubles water drops
Drive the blacktop north and east of Sunray, Texas, just south of the Oklahoma Panhandle, and keep your eyes peeled for center pivot irrigation systems that seem to have "fringe" hanging from the spans. The "fringe-like curtain" is doubling drops—from the traditional 60" increments found on most sprinklers across the High Plains to 30".
Tom and Ellis Moore, who farm 12,000 acres of corn, grain sorghum and cotton, have converted nearly all of their center pivots to 30" bubbler nozzles. They made the switch in late 2011, and it paid for itself by July 2012 in reduced water consumption and improved crop yields, Tom says.
Acting on suggestions from farmer friends in Arizona who had a positive experience with narrow-row drop spacing in chili pepper production, Tom says he tried the idea on the overhang and the last span of a pivot that was watering droughty cotton in 2011.
"When we saw significant yield increases on that test area compared with the cotton in the same field watered with spray nozzles, we turned around and spent a quarter of million dollars on our other sprinklers within two months," he explains. "Then, when 2012 turned out nearly as dry as 2011, the technology paid for itself by July."
Converting almost all of their pivots to 30" bubbler nozzles paid for itself in less than a year, says Texas farmer Tom Moore.
Less evaporation. Most of the benefits realized with 30" bubblers come from the nozzle itself, which doesn't atomize water, leaving it to the mercies of the hot, dry winds of the High Plains, explains Leon New, a long-time Amarillo-based Texas Agri-Life irrigation specialist.
"In addition, with the drops running near ground level, the bubblers don't wet the plant leaves," New says.
"Anytime water hits the leaves of a corn plant, you can count on losing 70% to 90% of that water to evaporation," he adds.
The other plus for doubling the number of drops in modern 20" row fields is that 30" spacing prevents dry spots between drops as the bubblers "weave" their way in and around the growing crop. "With 60" drops, we always had a dry spot somewhere," Tom says. "The 30s cured that."
Slow and steady. Much of the Moore Brothers Farm operation is equipped with Aqua-Spy soil moisture monitors, which have helped the brothers fine-tune their water application with the narrow-spaced bubble nozzles.
In fact, they've found by slowing down their sprinklers, they can fill the 60" root profile pre-season, which begins in February, and maintain adequate moisture for the crop throughout the season by making fewer passes with the sprinkler.
"That is to be expected," New says. "You lose water with every pass, so it stands to reason watering thoroughly in fewer passes will save those losses."
For example, one nine-pivot system Tom has been running this year is alternating three circles at a time on wheat, grain sorghum and corn—all running 540 gal. per minute (a rate that is considered to be approaching marginal for crop production in the north Texas Plains.) "So far, what we're seeing is that with our bubblers, that 540 gal. is as good as 700 gal. per minute through spray nozzles, a 23% benefit," he explains. "Our wheat had weather problems this year, but we have excellent corn and milo."
Moore adds: "We're seeing something simple here that can help us maintain irrigated agriculture in the High Plains. In our case, except for what goes to the IRS, every dollar generated on this irrigated farm stays right here above the aquifer. Those dollars go to the grocer, department stores and a thousand places. If we're going to keep our communities alive over the Ogallala, we have to emphasize the importance of these things."
How the Nozzle Technology Works
Irrigators in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle, including Tom and Ellis Moore, who switched to 30" bubblers, typically are using a standard weighted Senninger LDN (Low Drift Nozzle) with the spray pad inverted, says Dennis Martin of Panhandle Irrigation LLC. "The water hits that flat inverted pad and splashes back up into the irregular shape of the weight and provides a cascade of bubbling water instead of a fine mist," Martin explains. "That prevents the wind from wasting the water you just paid to pump."
On this nozzle, the spray pad is inverted to splash water back up into the weight and then out on the crop in a fountain-like manner.
Martin and his business partner and wife, Lexee, worked closely with the Moores to plan the renovation of the farm's sprinkler systems. The couple ran numerous computer models and projections on Moore's various field conditions and crop selections.
"Nozzles are the least expensive but most important component on a sprinkler system, but they are usually where producers first want to start cutting corners," Martin explains.
"The 30" bubbler system provides tremendous boosts in water use efficiency, particularly where growers are experiencing dropping aquifer levels and dwindling water supplies," he adds. "This can be as big as when we left impact sprinklers and moved to low-pressure systems, as far as water use efficiency."
Martin says the technology offers farmers comparable efficiency rates to subsurface drip systems without the high cost of installing drip tubing and the maintenance that goes along with it.


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Lots of stuff going on. I talked about hitting 90 in my last post and since then I've been going full force on the dailies (I know, right). I did the Anglers until I got my Tiny Goldfish. There are a few other things I might want from them, but I've put them on the back burner for now. The primary dailies I've been doing are the Tillers, Golden Lotus and Cloud Serpent. I've also been doing random heroics here and there.
For the Tillers, I've been getting really good at finding Dark Soil. I've got 2 "Best Friends" and the others are coming along nicely. I also try to get their food since that's a nice chunk of rep. I then head over to do the Golden Lotus dailies. I've hit Honored, so now I get 3 hubs of quests. I'm inching closer to Revered which unlocks some other reps to work on. The Cloud Serpent is the last set of dailies I do and I'm really getting close to Exalted finally. This one is purely cosmetic in that I want the mount! I have found 2 Onyx Eggs so far but the dailies generally give you a decent amount of rep, so it's not really as necessary as you might think.
I've also been doing a pretty good job leveling my professions. Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, Alchemy, Leatherworking, Skinning, Fishing, First Aid and Inscription are at max level now and the rest are being worked on. It's going to be tough to use alts to craft that you aren't leveling because of the use of Spirit of Harmony in many recipes and given that those are Soulbound.
I also finally hit average iLevel of 460 so I can check out LFR. I'll probably do that tonight if I have time. I'd like to get it in before the reset!
Anyway, that's all I have for you now. Do you have a favorite Daily quest chain? Any that you hate?


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Wanborough Manor: School for Secret Agents
For two and a half years during the Second World War, Wanborough Manor, a country house near Guildford, was a training school for a secret organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). If they passed muster, the students from Wanborough went on to further training before being sent to France to support members of the local resistance.
This book describes the training at Wanborough and includes pen portraits of the agents. Many lost their lives, but the others survived to see the restoration of France's freedom and the return of peace.


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James Kernan-Qbracelet Phone Charger
At Design Interviews
Interview with James Kernan : Frank Scott: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?. James Kernan : Our Inspiration for the QBracelet came because our phone's always kept dying. We wanted to find a solution that was innovative but also stylish. Our vision is to create products that seamlessly embed technologies within the fashion/tech space. .Frank Scott: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?. James Kernan : Our main focus was to make it stylish and functional. We want people to use the product without it being complicated. It should just work and look good at the same time. .Frank Scott: What are your future plans for this award winning design?. James Kernan : We are currently working on a partnership with a major American fashion Jewelry designer to collaborate on a more high end collection of the QBracelet and other phone charging Jewelry. .Frank Scott: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?. James Kernan : The development of the product took about a year. .Frank Scott: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?. James Kernan : It was a personal inspiration that I set out to create something that solved a major problem in my life because my phone was always dying. .Frank Scott: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?. James Kernan : We designed and produce the product in house. We launched it for pre orders in august 2014 and sold $50,000 in the first 24 hours. .Frank Scott: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?. James Kernan : We have an internal team of industrial designers and mechanical and electrical engineers to help with the design. .Frank Scott: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?. James Kernan : This is the first product of it's kind and is innovative in and of it's self. .Frank Scott: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?. James Kernan : The QBracelet came from the character form James Bond Q. .Frank Scott: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?. James Kernan : We Used CAD. and other software. .Frank Scott: What is the most unique aspect of your design?. James Kernan : The most unique aspect of the design is the embedded technology inside. Also, the clever latching mechanisms with the lightning connector inside. .Frank Scott: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?. James Kernan : We have an internal team of industrial designers and mechanical and electrical engineers to help with the design. .Frank Scott: What is the role of technology in this particular design?. James Kernan : The QBracelet is a stylish bracelet designed for both men and women that has the ability to charge smartphones and other electronics. People can cordlessly connect their devices directly to the bracelet via a connector that lies within the bracelet's clasp. Once connected, the QBracelet is free-standing and allows for easy, unfettered phone use. .Frank Scott: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?. James Kernan : Despite the struggles, we were confident in our team's ability to create. We had manufacturers tell us a curved battery would not be possible to produce, we had jewelry experts tell us we couldn't get the coating finishes we wanted due to the materials we were using, and we had engineering and design experts tell us it wasn't possible to get the size and weight we wanted at the charging capacity we were aiming for. Through hard work and perseverance, we're proud to say we proved them all wrong. .Frank Scott: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?. James Kernan : They contacted us. .Frank Scott: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?. James Kernan : The greatest hurdle was the immense learning curve we had to undergo. The learning curve was steep, and required us to constantly reiterate our designs, materials and prototyping methods. Looking back, with the expertise we gained in this process, we could probably now build the QBracelet in half the time and cost. .
James Kernan-Qbracelet Phone Charger Images:
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Training Type: Implementation Workshop
Innovation in technology combined with the latest AAC research has enabled individuals with significant communication challenges to access powerful tools for interactive and efficient communication. This session will address the design strategies, development process and research behind the Tobii Dynavox product communication content. Participants will explore both Compass and Communicator software and learn the purpose and function of each communication tool and learn the key elements for successful AAC assessment, planning and implementation. Design considerations for specific target conditions (e.g., autism, aphasia, ALS, etc.) will also be demonstrated and discussed.
Using video examples, case studies and relevant research, participants will explore how the communication tools found in both the Compass and Communicator page sets can be used to support language and literacy development, social participation and efficient communication. Participants will leave with a collection of practical ideas and tools that can be immediately implemented with individuals of various ages, abilities, and communication levels.
Learning Objectives: Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
This course will be offered for 0.5 ASHA CEUs (Introductory level, Professional Area).
Course Content Level: Intermediate
ASHA CEUs: 0.5
Date & Time: Thursday, February 18, 2016 09:00 AM - 03:30 PM MT
Location:The Childrens Hospital - Colorado 1101 MERCURY DR, COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado 80905, United States
Cost: Free of Charge
Open Seats: 14
Presenter: Stephanie Ekis
Stephanie Ekis, MS CCC-SLP is the Manager of Education and Training at Tobii Dynavox. She received her Master's degree from the University of Louisville and became a practicing Speech Pathologist in 1993. Stephanie has provided assessment, therapy, and consultation services for children and adults with severe speech and language disabilities for over 20 years. Stephanie's current responsibilities include customer training development, implementation consulting and new product development. Stephanie is dedicated to innovation in the field of AAC. She has a deep interest in helping augmented communicators and their support teams as they move through the assessment process as well as identifying practical implementation strategies to help overcome communication barriers in their everyday lives.
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