Canan Arikan is a women’s advocate and certified InterPlayer leader. She has more than 20 years of volunteer work supporting and empowering women and youth. Arriving in the United States in 2016 as an asylee, she needed a way to heal, release, and relax. InterPlay tools and forms helped her through this healing process with fun and joy. She was delighted to share all of these treasures with other women from around the world. In 2018, asylee Canan and her collaborator Ruth Schowalter founded InterPlay SIS to bring together asylum seekers, refugees, other international women, and U.S. citizens to connect, inspire, and learn from one another through InterPlay. In 2019, SIS began Online Global SIS to offer InterPlay to women worldwide. In 2020, InterPlay SIS became a 501c3 non-profit with the Body Wisdom Office. Canan holds an MBA and completed graduate studies for a PhD (ABD) in Management and Organization.

 

Ruth Schowalter is a certified leader in InterPlay, an improvisational system that fosters authentic communication by acknowledging the “whole” person (body, mind, heart and soul). In her interactive InterPlay workshops, Ruth integrates improvisation, physical movement, and other enlivening forms of expression, providing the right tools for her participants to make meaningful conversations and give memorable, effective presentations. Ruth specializes in American English fluency, with an emphasis on improving presentation skills appropriate for corporate, academic, and other professional settings. With her Master’s of Science in Applied Linguistics and ESL, she has taught more than twenty-five years at the Language Institute of Georgia Tech University applying her expertise to business, science, and creative communication. Co-founding SIS and Global SIS: InterPlay with Canan has been a meaningful way to merge her academic experience working with international people with InterPlay's active creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body.