Cindy Allen’s mission is to help women create the lives they love especially if it means starting over in midlife. In her mid forties she lost everything, for the second time in 5 years. Cindy and her boys found themselves homeless, with no money, no family in the area, no job and faced the prospect of either seeking emergency shelter or pointing the car out of state. One pivotal night when all seemed lost, it all began to turn around miraculously. She then decided to take matters in her own hands and start a business. I knew I could count on myself more than I could yet another employer who might lay me off.

Two years ago, she started “Z’s Cleaning Crew” with spare change. It evolved from residential and commercial cleaning, to catering, entertaining services, home organization, public speaking and workshops. Her business is now called, “Cindy Allen’s Shine” which encompasses all of her endeavors. The goal has always been, whenever possible, to provide work through her business for other women who found themselves having a hard time finding traditional employment, for whatever reason. That goal has evolved from providing work opportunities, to helping women create their own.

She has recently developed an 8-week workshop called, “Now What?” designed to help women faced with big life changes move from fear and paralysis to excitement and motivation as they identify the life they want to move toward and gain momentum to get there. An online version of the workshop is in development to be made available to women’s shelters, a place she was inches from landing herself. Today, after walking the razor’s edge and surviving strong and intact, she wants to help others not only do the same, but create lives that bring them joy.

Cindy was a graphic designer for fifteen years at the beginning of her career and owned a design business in Michigan before moving to Colorado with her family twelve years ago. After moving to Colorado, she was a stay-at-home-mom for seven years before her 25 year marriage ended. After surviving the years of upheaval, she now lives blissfully in a beautiful home with a beautiful studio attached where she loves to paint, write, make jewelery, sew pretty things and create whatever her heart desires. When she isn’t in her studio, or working, she loves to cook up a storm for her teenage boys and their friends, take ballet classes, ski, run, kayak a little, camp and anything else that let’s her experience the beauty all around us.