SALEM, Ore. -- Oregon’s former First Couple, feeling exonerated after federal prosecutors declined to press influence peddling charges, say they’re ready to return.
For Gov. John Kitzhaber, architect of the Oregon Health Plan, that means re-entering the world of health care policy.
But for his fiancée, the 28-month ordeal has been transformative, leading to a new career path involving marijuana, Tony Robbins and a spiritual awakening.
Cylvia Hayes is regrowing her career as a clean economy consultant – the same work that raised questions when she took on clients seeking to influence state policy while serving as an unpaid advisor to the governor.
She recently started offering her services to marijuana growers and sellers focusing on energy efficiency, water conservation, carbon emission reduction and marketing. Last week, according to her web site, she attended the National Cannabis Business Summit and Expo in Oakland, California.
Timeline: Kitzhaber, Hayes controversy
Hayes also is pitching a new role as a life coach, specializing in “helping people recover from high-profile public shaming events in a way that reduces their stress, makes them stronger, more confident and heals and expands both their personal and public identities.”
Hayes is intimately familiar with negative publicity.
In addition to the influence-peddling questions that derailed Kitzhaber’s fourth term barely five weeks in, Hayes endured media reports about her 1997 green-card marriage to an Ethiopian immigrant and her alleged role in a marijuana grow operation.
“As someone who has been through it myself, I now work with and support people who get caught in the horror of having their lives and careers blow up in spectacular fashion,” Hayes said in a June 11 post on her web site. “For some people this is more public than for others and the public piece is certainly an added trauma – this I know.”
In January 2017, Hayes completed a 100-hour training course, with tuition starting at $3,996, to become a certified strategic coach through the Tony Robbins/Chloe Madanes Coaches Training Institute.
Robbins is the motivational speaker and author known for his infomercials, self-help tapes, books and seminars.
Hayes also is an instructor in “A Course in Miracles,” a self-study course on spiritual transformation.
“I love working with people who are determined to reclaim their careers, lives and place in society after intense, identity-challenging ordeals,” Hayes wrote on her blog.
In a June 17 Facebook post, Hayes said she currently is writing a book “about my experience with public shaming and expanding my public speaking to include the tremendous destructiveness of dishonest, unethical media bad-actors in our sensationalized media culture.”
Attorneys for Hayes and Kitzhaber did not respond to interview requests, and Hayes did not answer an email sent to her personally at her company, Bend-based 3E Strategies.
tloew@statesmanjournal.com, 503-399-6779 or follow at Twitter.com/Tracy_Loew