People Behind

Asaf Shani

As an undergraduate in economics and accountancy in his third year at the mergers and acquisitions department of the international accounting and financial consulting firm, Deloitte & Touche, Asaf discovered something. He discovered that he didn’t really like what he was doing.

Another tortured soul, you might say. What has that to do with life skills? Well, that was over 16 years ago and during the past years, Asaf has established a firm specializing in conflicts and negotiations (check www.IwinConflict.com). 

He consulted and trained professionals and individuals worldwide on how to better manage their daily conflicts. At the end of almost every workshop, one (or usually more) of the participants would say “If only I’d known these skills when I was a kid, my whole life would have been better “Repeatedly hearing people express their need for life skills education planted the idea of creating such a site in Asaf’s mind and so JadeLifeSkills.com was born.

Undoubtedly, such skills, if given to Asaf when he was a kid, would have changed his life dramatically for the better as well.

Troon Harrison

She is the editor of the Jade Life Skills series. Her academic background includes degrees in English, Education, and Sociology, and she has over twenty-five years of editing experience. Her own thirty-six books are published internationally. Troon’s involvement in the Jade series exceeds attention to grammar and proofreading; she ensures that the ideas in the books are presented in a way suitable for young readers, suggests ideas in the plots, and consults regarding the artwork. She lives with her son in Canada.

Jade & Andy

The first book in the Jade Life Series – Learning Manners – came out in July 2013; Jade was 11 months old then. When she was two years old, Asaf started reading her the books and soon she’d become a junior – not in importance but in size – consultant to the series. In the beginning, her involvement included choosing the color of Mom’s shoes in Letting Go of Yucky Feelings or the ice cream flavor in the same book (chocolate in the 2015 first edition and strawberry in the 2018 second edition as her preferences changed throughout the years).

As Jade grew older, her involvement deepened. She chose the monster’s image in Meaning Attribution, suggested to demonstrate the idea presented in Learning to Claim using a play rather than by Mom telling a story and much more.

Asaf shared with her the stories while writing them. If she’d stayed tuned he knew other kids would too and if she stopped asking questions and started drowsing, it was a clear sign that changes are needed.

And then, on October 2015, Andy was born. Asaf admits that it didn’t cross his mind to include Andy in the Jade series until the two had a ‘did too – did not’ fight. In the midst of the verbal battle, Jade stung Andy “And you don’t even appear in Dad’s books!” … Boy, was he proud to see himself in the next book that came out – Mental Flexibility!

Andy officially joined the project as a junior – junior consultant balancing Jade’s marshmallow ice cream cravings with chocolate addictions ones.