By Stacey Piper While many in-person fitness franchises shuttered during the pandemic, boutique gyms are taking off, providing smaller group sessions focused on one or two types of exercises. Look around and you’ll see yoga studios, cycle bars, and many other specialized workout regimens, including Pure Barre. Pure Barre combines …
By Stacey Piper Since school starts before Labor Day, we take our end-of-summer beach trip to the Outer Banks in early August. This year with three tween-age girls, the week was filled with floating movie nights in the pool, TikTok dance videos, and crab walks by flashlight. Summer is still …
By Stacey Piper and Denise Willard Marketing communications firms come in many shapes and sizes. Some are full-service, while others specialize in niche skillsets. Some work only on projects, while others require a minimum monthly retainer. And some work collaboratively with in-house resources, while others must manage all aspects of …
By Stacey Piper Recently some of my friends started playing Wordle, just a few of the more than 300,000 people playing it daily! My Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with their obscure-looking results on, which look a bit like Sudoku on the side of a Rubik’s cube. I’m supposed …
By Stacey Piper What a month it has been for this horse lover—the stunning Kentucky Derby, followed by Mother’s Day with my equestrian daughter! The last three years since my 11-year-old got into riding have been the realization of my childhood dream. Practice, patience, and perseverance are just a few …
By Stacey Piper Some friends of mine are avid fishermen who enjoy offshore fishing for red snapper and grouper in the Gulf of Mexico. They invited me to spend a day on their boat when I was in Florida for a conference. Having only fished with worms from shorelines and …
By Stacey Piper Spring in Washington is always so refreshing and somehow unexpected, bursting with surprises, despite the fact that I’ve experienced this seasonal cycle for more than 30 years living in Virginia. At the same time that humans are trying to adjust to the lost hour of sleep on …
By Stacey Piper Relationship Building 101: Don’t forget birthdays, anniversaries, or Valentine’s Day. And apparently we’re not! Americans spent $23.9 billion on Valentine’s Day in the U.S. this year, according to the National Retail Federation. That’s roughly the same amount as the state of Connecticut’s annual budget or the 2021 …
By Stacey Piper It’s no surprise that this year’s holiday season was markedly different than my family’s pre-COVID celebrations. The lighting of the National Tree near the White House wasn’t open to the public, but we masked up and went downriver to our first President’s home, Mount Vernon, which was …
By Stacey Piper and Nicholas Kosar Web development and web design practices emerge one year and solidify as trends or fade away as fads in nearly every industry. It can be confusing for businesses to prioritize their best practices approach to building effective websites. Fortunately, GovCon and AEC have the …
