Paula Schaper, Vice President of Mat Bevel Company. Photo courtesy of Jim Schrimpf.

Paula Schaper

Paula brings her career expertise in authentic branding, economic development, entertainment and community building to the mission of sharing the Bevel philosophy with worldwide audiences. In the late 1980s, she and her business partner created the largest paid fan club in history for New Kids on the Block prior to the introduction of the Internet. Over the last 15 years, she’s developed a social science method called Genis Factor^® that taps into the intelligence, personality and energy of human collectives by mapping and leveraging success patterns and untapped assets through time.

As CEO of her company WestWordVision for the last 20 years, Paula has helped communities of all kinds recognize and use their authentic character assets as the basis for collaborative, sustainable communication, decision-making and action. Her clients have included Arizona Tech Parks, Green Chemistry & Commerce Council, Healthy Building Network, New Jersey Innovation Institute and New Jersey Institute of Technology, PENN State University, Arizona Centennial Commission, Arizona-Mexico Commission and the Tohono O’odham Nation.

After earning a Bachelor of Music degree for harp performance from the University of Michigan, Paula booked and promoted concerts for Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Spyro Gyra. At several Detroit-area marketing firms, she managed accounts for Gelman Sciences, Borders Books and Crain Communications. In Michigan and California, she branded and built fan communities for musical artists Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Aerosmith, MC Hammer and Paula Abdul.

Paula moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1992 and joined her brother, Ned Schaper, to establish the Mat Bevel Institute as a popular avant-garde theater venue. A few years later in 1997, she founded WestWordVision.

With the evolution of new business models and technology, she’s ready to take the magical world of Beveldom to global audiences.