Angela Scaperlanda Bujan, MA, is a bilingual certified spiritual director, coach, facilitator, retreat leader, speaker, writer, editor, and organizational consultant. As founder of HELP Professional Services LLC, Angela sought to establish a unique organization centered around helping individuals, groups, and other organizations become who they are meant to be. Her unique background in intercultural communication, business, and spirituality has allowed her the opportunity to work with individuals and organizations across countries, sectors, and organizational levels. She brings her professional skills, fluency in Spanish, intercultural expertise, solid spiritual base, and relevant life experiences to the table. Angela has over 25 years of experience working with local, national, and international clients. This background allows her to listen for, observe, and understand the diverse needs of individuals, groups, communities, and organizations. Each presentation, retreat, workshop, and session is tailored to meet the current needs of the people with whom she has the privilege to work.
Angela actively seeks and works toward establishing an integrative life that allows her to invest a substantial portion of her time and talent building her family as well as building HELP Professional Services. She is constantly amazed at the lessons she learns as a wife and mother, that she can apply to her work and those from work that benefit her family.
Angela Scaperlanda Bujan, Founder / Managing Partner of Help Professional Services LLC
Hi Angela, introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
This is always a challenging question. We each have so many intricate parts of ourselves, that it is hard to know where to start! I grew up as the youngest of six with three older brothers and two older sisters. My father, now retired, was an international economics professor, and my mom, who was constantly studying, learning, and working in the community, always said her most important job was to love her children. I am happily married to my best friend Elliott, thanks to a lot of hard work and dedication, and never giving up on each other. Our children, Grace, Nicolas, and Gianna are, with complete sincerity, our greatest gifts. I tell my kids all the time that I not only love them, but I sure like them a whole lot! This was a huge benefit, especially during quarantine! I actively seek and work toward establishing an integrative life, committed to living what I have come to understand as my mission from “the inside out”. This means I have intentionally worked to simplify my life, trying to take out things that do not have meaning and ensure that the pieces of my life – my faith, family, work, community connections, and other activities – come together to form a meaningful whole. This is an ongoing process that I need to revisit at times. This focus has freed me to invest a substantial portion of my time and talent devoted to my family, especially when my kids were young, as well as dedicated to work that I love. I am constantly amazed at how the people and activities in my life inform and influence one another. There are many lessons I learn as a wife and mother, that I can apply to my work and those from work that benefit my family.
In terms of activities, I love to be active as well as still and silent – biking, hiking, kayaking, swimming, playing anything (sports, cards, board games), as well as reading, journaling, and silent prayer. As I mentioned, I also love the work I am privileged to do. All these activities are where I am most alive and most at home.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
Here is the story behind choosing HELP Professional Services as my business name. Shortly before founding the LLC, I had just experienced something profound; an internal transformation having completed my Spiritual Guidance Training Program. I knew I was different inside – I was still me, with the same parts of my story, but somehow, the pieces had arranged themselves in a new way. I could not return to my old way of being even if I wanted to. I needed to find a way forward. In my personal life, although not necessarily easy, it was clearer – I was able to be more present, love more deeply, and listen more intently and intentionally. In my professional life, however, it required a lot of prayer, thinking, and reshaping. I needed to find a way to integrate this new way of being, seeing, and interacting with the world. It was time to move beyond being an “independent consultant” to create something new that would not just be for me but would serve as a structure for others to grow as well. I went through the process of forming an LLC somewhat mechanically until it came time to find a name. I had to ask myself, what is important to me? What do I love to do? What do I want to be known for? After playing around with different names, I concluded that what I want to do in whatever arena of my life is to “help” people become more fully who they are meant to be and to serve others while growing and applying my own gifts. I looked up different definitions of help.
help v
to make it easier for somebody to do something, or possible for somebody to do something that one person cannot do alone, by providing assistance of some sort
to provide somebody with advice, directions, or other information
to make something easier or more likely
to bring about an improvement in something unpleasant, unbearable, or unfortunate
to provide somebody with something that he or she needs
to promote the advancement or improvement of something
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
All the definitions I found summed up the work I love to do, and the services HELP Professional Services offers to our clients. I found my name. The type of services we offer to our clients will vary greatly depending on their needs, but the intention will be simple – we will help others grow personally, professionally, and spiritually whatever their circumstances.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
One of my greatest value propositions is adapting to the needs of my clients – meeting them where they are at. My intercultural skills allow me to adapt quickly to new cultural environments, including organizational, community, and group environments. This means that my business is relevant to individuals, groups, and organizations from many different sectors. This is a wonderful thing because the pool of potential clients is very large. On the flip side though, this is also challenging. The pool can seem too big at times if I am promoting a new program, and it is sometimes hard to know “where to cast my net” and “which lure” will be most effective to draw in new clients who will benefit the most.
What are your current goals for your business?
I am hoping for the opportunity to work with more organizations truly committed to transformative growth at all levels within their organizational structure. I love working with individuals and teams, as well as speaking to and working with groups, but it has been a while since I have been able to work with whole organizations. I am also expanding Help Professional Services to launch another LLC, called Resilience Land, dedicated to understanding and building greater resilience. We have dedicated a lot of thought, time, and effort to understand resilience better ourselves, and to capture this understanding in a comprehensive model called The Resilience Tree Model™, which forms the basis for building greater resilience. At the “heart” of the model, just like at the literal “heart” of resilience, you find what we call “the inner core” which is critical to thriving during times of adversity. I am looking forward shortly to getting this content and corresponding tools and services from our heads, hearts, laptops, and development site, out into the world.
What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?
I have always intentionally planned to grow my business as my children grew, slowly over time. My children are very close to being grown, so I am finding more time to dedicate to growing my business. I have been humbled by operating a small business, and have a newfound respect for small business owners, where you need to do a little bit of everything. I realized when I was a part of larger organizations, how much I took for granted the unique expertise that others add to help bring about success. I look forward to forming more strategic alliances and partnerships, possibly contracting more people, and even bringing people on board to form internal teams. I would like to help others be successful, but I also hope to work with others who will help me be more successful as well!
Who inspires you to be the best that you can be? What is your work inspired by?
I often find inspiration in beauty – in nature, in the arts, and in people. For example, as you can tell from my logo, butterflies are significant to me. There are many reasons, but when I think about humbly fulfilling your life’s purpose, the butterfly always comes to mind. I have been inspired by their transformation process, but additionally, I am inspired by the way they live with unpretentious beauty and grace. Butterflies go about their day fulfilling their life’s purpose by feeding themselves and simultaneously contributing to the pollination process, all while adding beauty wherever they go. They are not trying to be beautiful and attract attention, they just simply are who they are meant to be and are exquisite. I see this kind of beauty emerge from the people I have the privilege to work with; people who courageously shed the false self, understand and live more fully their unique purpose, and humbly go about living each day unconsciously and unpretentiously adding beauty to the world around them. They are exquisite.
Music also inspires me. I heard an Amy Grant song for the first time while I was studying in Spain during the senior year of my undergraduate studies. Now an “old” song, but still inspirational to me, it goes,
”All of my friends are happy to stay here in this yard day after day, but something inside me has called me away. I don’t understand, but I know I can’t stay. I’m going to fly, no one knows where, but I am going to fly, sour through the air. I have felt for the first time I can be myself, no more faces to hide behind, just a smile and a dream that’s mine, even if I am the only one who wants to fly.”
That song marked me profoundly at that moment and has been one of many theme songs that have inspired me throughout my life’s journey.
Of course, my parents have both greatly inspired and influenced me and the shaping of my life. My husband and children provide me with my greatest joy and meaning. I cannot fail to mention that the most real, profound, and essential daily inspiration and guidance I receive is from Jesus and his mom, Mary, who I now loving think of as “Mama Mary”. In our current culture, it feels “risky” to admit since many people may misunderstand it, others may make assumptions about me, and perhaps many others may laugh it off. I can only be honest and tell you that it is true.
Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
I often describe my life and, in this case, my professional career, as a mosaic. I have many intricate, colorful, and beautiful pieces that together, when looked at from a broader view, form something unexpected and even more exquisite. My early career exploded beyond anything I ever could have planned or dreamed of coming out of graduate school. There are many memorable people and projects I was fortunate enough to encounter in my work, but a few stand out that I am most proud of during that time. One example was an investigation I was contracted to conduct on the Current State of Education in Human Rights in El Salvador following the end of the 12-year civil war. I was contracting with the Interamerican Institute of Human Rights, where I completed my graduate internship and had previously worked to offer specialized courses in human rights. My unique background, training, and own intellectual curiosity led me to become somewhat of an expert in designing and implementing diagnostic, planning, and impact evaluation systems. I ended up becoming an independent consultant after a year and a half. I was asked by a director I greatly respected, who really in looking back on it, took a chance on me offering this opportunity, to conduct a study utilizing three main data points – a national public opinion poll, analysis of the current national educational curriculum reform, and a representative sample of classroom observation, just two years after the civil war ended. Another director who was from El Salvador raised doubts about whether I was the person for the job. As a young woman in my early twenties from the United States, I kind of wondered that myself. Gonzalo, the director who was contracting me, showed absolute confidence in my ability to conduct this study. I did not sleep the night before my first preliminary fact-finding trip to El Salvador. Having recently read the United Nations Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on many of the atrocities committed during the war and having seen the TV coverage and movies about so many tragedies, I felt apprehensive about traveling there alone. I asked the director to secure a driver who would work with me during my stay, a concession he fully supported and wished he would have thought of himself. I met with three different individuals that first day to get background information to plan the study. After meeting with them, I quickly realized, we needed to form a research team. I wrote up a proposal, secured additional funding, and hired the three individuals who would each be responsible for conducting one section of the study. I would coordinate all three and synthesize the results, making final observations, recommendations, and coordinating the publication of our findings. In three short months, we concluded our study, met as a team to present, and discuss our findings. The publication of our results followed shortly after. Both Gonzalo and my father called me to excitedly report that our investigation was now housed in the Library of Congress! At the time, it was cutting-edge information! My naivety, humility, and perhaps a little bit of stupidity, made me downplay this accomplishment. I now realize how unusual it was for a young American woman from DeKalb, IL to end up coordinating an international study, putting together a team of male researchers twice my age, working in my non-native language, and efficiently compiling the data in a very short amount of time. We went on to publish multiple editions of our results in English and Spanish and the study was used in numerous national and international trainings. There were personally impactful moments during my time in El Salvador as well that I share on rare occasions. This is just one of many projects I miraculously was privileged to be a part of during my early career. I often worked from “gut instinct” and gained competence in areas such as organizational structure and development, change management, strategic planning, educational instructional design, and facilitation through my various international contracts. I was privileged to work with other projects within the Institute, UN organizations, not-for-profits, women’s organizations, refugee programs, children’s rights organizations, among others. I learned a lot, grew my skills, was challenged, and met some unbelievable people (from Nobel peace prize winners, presidents, ministers of state, and military personnel, to indigenous women who came from villages with no running water or electricity but who were becoming leaders for human rights in their communities).
Since that time, I have added other colorful variations to my life/career mosaic. Perhaps the most surprising and profoundly rewarding has been becoming a spiritual director almost 10 years ago. My training allows me to meet with anyone seeking to grow spiritually. My own faith tradition, as a Christian Catholic, anchors me and gives me plenty of spaciousness to continue seeking greater growth. Helping people achieve “high performance” is rewarding but does not always equate with achieving real-life success. Sometimes people work hard to look polished on the outside to mask the brokenness on the inside. When people can engage and dedicate time to doing the challenging interior work and begin to live from the inside out, no masks are required.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
I think the biggest thing I would change would be the fear of vulnerability and trying to cling to control at all costs. In many ways, we are all “walking wounded”. Everyone has had to deal with something at some point in their life. We are simple, yet complex beings, who, as a whole person, are made of mind, body, and spirit.
Our culture, and our world, are struggling right now. People are trying to make sense of their lives. Even people who have outward success are often left empty and looking for deeper meaning. It takes both courage and time to turn your focus inward to discover what is there. Not everyone is willing or able to do this. It is like playing an instrument that has never been properly tuned. Imagine the people around you, in your work, community, or even in your home, all playing in a giant orchestra meant to play beautiful music, but no one takes time “to tune” – instead of playing masterful music, sometimes we will just screech and scratch our way through.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
There are so many pivotal moments that have shaped this mosaic of my life, that it is hard to pick just one.
For example, guided by what some may call “gut instinct”, that I experience as “Holy Spirit guidance” when I was 13, I just knew I needed to become fluent in Spanish, and after 4-years of high school and 4-years of college Spanish, a study abroad experience in Spain and getting an undergraduate degree in Spanish, I ended up with a teaching job at a bicultural center in Costa Rica. I almost didn’t go, but a providential encounter with a family friend made it clear to me that that is where I needed to be. Having decided to go, I originally planned to stay 3-6 months, but to make a long, and interesting story, short, I ended up living there for a total of seven years. I went there not knowing anyone and left there, married, adding a wonderful extended family, and having worked and traveled in almost every country in Latin America. It is a long story that I sometimes get requests to tell, but I can only tell you, that God’s plans are always way bigger and better than our own. I met my future husband Elliott on my first day in Costa Rica and after two months, we knew we would build our future together.
Some pivotal moments have been exciting and others, extremely painful. All contribute to the beauty of my mosaic. The moment I knew I would be bilingual, taking a leap and going to Costa Rica, meeting my future husband, and a chance encounter that opened the door to another enhanced career focus are but a few. I can see so many influential faces, people who have unexpectedly come into my life and added something special that I did not know was missing previously. These are all exciting and welcomed pivotal moments though. Sometimes our painful moments even more profoundly shape our lives. Suffering, although not welcome, can lead to tremendous growth if we allow ourselves to be fortified and positively shaped as a result. These painful “before and after” moments are pivotal, life-changing experiences that many people have, but if they go unattended, can crush you. Three such moments in my own life are when my mom suddenly died in a car accident when I was 15 years old when my first-born son died in my arms, 40 short but meaningful hours after we welcomed him into the world, and when one of my dearest friends Beth died after battling stage 4 breast cancer. Each of these experiences profoundly influenced the course of my life. I often credit our son Nathan who died with saving me from the treadmill of a corporate climb (other people sometimes call this the hamster wheel I believe). Collaborating to publish Beth’s story following her death, in Update 21 – A Journal of Spiritual Victory, helped me process my own loss. My grief and suffering allow me to accompany others in their grief. I am not afraid to go to deep places as I walk with others. These experiences have also shaped and strengthened my “inner core”, leading me to understand resilience and the resilience building process in a profound, firsthand experiential way.
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