Sharon has served the tourism industry for 30 years. She is a researcher, grant writer and develops tourism product – her latest projects are the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail and Birding Louisiana.

She develops her projects from grass-roots efforts that includes conversations with the local community. She uses these discussions to determine storylines, local story tellers, tradition bearers among others to identify ways to develop new tourism product that is meaningful to the community. Sharon conducts economic strategic planning, community inventories and assessments, helps communities develop viable marketing plans for small to shoe-string budgets, makes presentations on a variety of topics and serves as a clearinghouse for information, best practices and research.

She has been nationally-recognized for pioneering new tourism product development techniques that helped the tourism industry concentrate more on stories than sites. Her focus was the “peopling of the process.” She believes that when the stories of the people are told, the sites and attractions make sense.

Sharon earned his BA in Journalism (1978), and her MA specializing in Anthropology (1998) from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.