Sharon is CandleLight’s Chief Financial Officer. She has a power understanding of humanity and the arts, but does not forget that, all projects require a financial footing to materialize. She oversees grant management and project execution for which she has received multiple awards and recognitions by major contributing corporations such as Amazon for her project on “Adopt a Family for Christmas” in Freemont, Ca.
Sharon Slayton launched her unique development program, Create Our Picture, in 2016 at Candle Light Global America Art & Educational Gallery in Pacific Grove, CA. There, as CFO & Community Development Officer, Sharon created programs to define what our future can, must, and must not be. Since 2017, these three important questions have defined her work – together they funnel the creative and emotional powers of community and art into informed, expressive, and transformative works capable of uniting divided communities to visualize and materialize the future.
As “Captain” of SMSPirate Productions, Sharon is a professional speaker, writer and entrepreneurial strategist. Her past works have garnered best practice awards in change management and technology initiative methodology planning around the U.S. She leads workshops in a variety of topics, including Transformative Funding, which blends strategy with program office designs developed through her Master’s degree, and helps students of higher education fund and realize their research into value-added, future-creating propositions.
Sharon was a San Francisco Bay Area resident for over 35 years, and now resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she is a doctoral researching scholar. She hopes to launch her transformational research project there in mid 2021, tackling the issue of social change and plantation presence in the Louisiana Delta. She holds an MBA in technology management from University of Phoenix (2001), and a BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley (1995).