Greg Smith

Greg Smith. As someone whose life has been deeply touched by the Transformative Language Arts (TLA), Greg is honored to help further the TLA Network's mission. While he has always supported artists and creatives and appreciated how they enrich our lives; he has only recently begun to create with words himself. He completed a memoir as part of his legacy to his family and has begun a memoir about his wife Diane and their family's experience with Diane's vascular dementia. It was Diane's initial involvement with TLA that opened the door for Greg's participation, and for that he will remain forever grateful! Greg holds a BA in English and a Secondary Education Teaching Certification.

Scott Youmans

Scott Youmans, MA, TLA, is a past board member of the TLA Network and graduated from the TLA program at Goddard College. An Interfaith Minister, Scott offers spiritual companionship, facilitates workshops, and supplements these interests by offering technical expertise to values-based organizations. He is currently in the midst of his Clinical Pastoral Education studies at Naropa. Energeticspirit.life

Maryellen Potts

Maryellen Potts, PhD, experienced TLAN for the first time in October 2025 at the TLAN Conference. Since then, she’s become part of the Bridge Programming Committee, the Marketing Committee, and recently the Board of Directors.

Her professional expertise is in literary research and nursing/oncology research. As an English professor, she realized nursing was the flip of literature studies – both disciplines examine the human condition, but from different perspectives. TLAN community, network, and classes help us examine the human condition within ourselves, and within others through the power of words to heal and transform. Her goal is to use her skill sets to support and grow TLAN with the help of other like-minded people.

Bobbie Jo Morrell

Bobbie Jo Morrell lives in Colorado, has a Master’s degree in Counseling and is a Certified Spiritual Director. 

Her spiritual path has led through participating in and leading reflective writing workshops and contemplative practice groups, hiking and backpacking in the Rocky Mountains, including solo backpacking sections of the Colorado Trail. She is currently counseling and leading small groups and workshops in reflective writing while working to finish her memoir. https://shadowhorse.org/

TLA seeks to preserve the richness and diversity of language itself, and the intimacy of human-to-human contact in an increasingly technological age.

Transformative Language Arts (TLA) is a profoundly radical response to the fragmentation, isolation, violence, hopelessness, and despair of our culture. In the same way the word “radical” comes from the word “roots,” TLA brings people literally back to their roots, and from that perspective, gives them a wider view of what they and what their communities might be.

Transformative Language artists envision a merger of the language arts with individual and collective liberation: writing, storytelling, theatre, and music can work towards community-building, cultural and ecological restoration, and personal development.  

Vision of the TLA Network

The TLA Network exists to support and promote individuals and organizations that use the spoken, written, or sung word as a tool for personal and community transformation. As such, the Network is committed to providing spaces, both physical and electronic, where people interested in Transformative Language Arts can share resources, network, learn, and enhance their capacity to practice Transformative Language Arts as Right Livelihood in their communities.