About Pathwise Parenting

Cultivating Presence allows us to be authentic and opens new pathways for connecting with our children.

Co-Founders Joleen Hollow-Bist and Jennifer Winson are friends and colleagues from their lives as child educators. They also are co-teachers and graduates of Pathwise Leadership and have worked closely with their founders since its inception. After hearing from many parents inside Pathwise express their deepest questions, concerns and wishes for their families, it became clear that a program designed for parents seeking to elevate family life was needed.

Our endeavor lies in inspiring parents to transcend their challenges, awaken their gifts, and create more joy, fulfillment, and deep connection within their families.

Born from the impulse to support parents and their universal wish in seeking quality life at home, Pathwise Parenting launched its Parent Development Program in 2016. With 40 + years of collective experience working with children, young adults and their parents in educational and psychological fields; Jennifer and Joleen successfully give parents tools and insights to transcend difficult moments and create fulfilling lives with their families.

Meet the Founders

Jennifer Winson

Loves working with children and their families and has been involved in supporting Human Development in many communities for the past two decades. Jennifer feels being a parent is one of the hardest, humbling and most rewarding roles in a person's life. For her, the practices of presence, authenticity, kind accountability, and a receptive beholding of others are the hard-won pillars that open the doors to flourishing life-long relationships. As a parent facilitator she offers to explore our strengths and gifts through these pillars as well as guide clients toward practical and scientific developmental research that can support the deepest wishes and needs for ourselves and our families. She works as an Educator with children and youth K-12 as well as a Parent Mentoring. Jennifer and her husband Fred are the proud parents of two children, Eliana and Caelum, who inspire her every day and remind her to keep an open heart. BFA, Waldorf Teacher Certified (M-level), Pathwise Leadership Certified (PhD-level) Currently earning a YPF family coaching certificate

Joleen Hollow-Bist

Joleen Hollow-Bist, RN, BSN and Parent and Early Childhood Educator comes to Pathwise as a founding Pathwise member and as one of the Co-Founders of Pathwise Parenting. For the past three decades Joleen has worked with Parents and children in both the health and educational fields. As a nurse she worked as a birthing, community health and home hospice nurse, lactation consultant, and mindful parent educator. As an Educator, Joleen has been an early childhood teacher in both preschool and kindergarten, and presently teaches parent and child and parent infant classes. She periodically teaches grade and middle school students health, movement, and handwork classes, camps, and workshops. She is a parent with her husband, Todd, of Samantha, aged 20 years, and Natalie aged 10 years. She is also a foster parent to Hantela, aged 22 yrs. Joleen has been supported by her mindful practice both at home as a parent and at work as a nurse and teacher for the past 2 decades and wishes to continue to develop as a parent, while working with other parents.

Through the Pathwise Parenting class, I feel that I have developed a better understanding of my teens’ real needs and feelings. I have become more patient and understanding of their circumstances. In challenging moments I have learned to pause and reflect on how my past and emotional state will affect my interaction with my children. I believe I am becoming a better parent with Pathwise Parenting and strongly recommend this class to parents with children of all ages.

France Perron, Parent of 2 teens

Pathwise parenting help us to clarify and better understand what really matters to us as parents. Today there are so many external pressures that sometimes compete or conflict with what we believe is most important about family life. Pathwise helped us see these pressures more clearly and by learning and experiencing together in a group of people working towards like goals we also realized that our challenges are shared by others. Experiencing this commonality, sharing our story and listening to others, opened our awareness and restored some of the giving energy that parenting naturally requires.