Stephen
is founder and CEO of Dolle Communications, where he provides
drum circle facilitation, motivational speaking and consulting,
and neuroscience consults in hydrocephalus.
He founded Dolle Communications to offer marketing and science related communications, skills he honed with his earlier CNI company over 10 years and skills he picked up during development of his neurological monitoring device, the DiaCeph Test. The DiaCeph invention came as a result of challenges he faced in living with a CNS brain shunt for hydrocephalus, which occurred after a 1992 brain injury. From 1992 to 1998, Stephen pursued research with CNS shunt devices, hydrocephalus, and key areas of the neurosciences, and in 1996, authored a key petition with the Food & Drug Administration that led to the 1999 STAMP Conference in Wash., D.C. He then formed DiaCeph Inc., becoming its CEO in charge of most aspects of the company. Though hailed as a pioneer and visionary, he was unable to obtain funding to bring it to market. Today, DiaCeph could be an app for a mobile phone, something Stephen would like to see happen. CNS shunt malfunction remains the No. 1 neurosurgical issue in children.
Stephen's entry into percussion began in 2004 with an African djembe drum he bought for music jam sessions. He began taking lessons and workshops, and eventually drum circle facilitation with Arthur Hull. He saw how drumming aided his recovery, and began to apply his music therapy, music & brain research, and sensory integration methods to drumming, stumbling upon numerous discoveries. By 2008, he began marketing drumming & keynote ideas to area organizations, and attracted a following of fans and clients. He wrote about his developments on his web site, Facebook page, and numerous other web sites.
Prior to his 1992 brain injury, he worked as a nuclear medicine technologist and a marketing & management consultant and fundraiser. As a technologist in 1982, he started his own imaging company, Certified Nuclear Imaging (CNI), and operated it until the time of his brain injury in 1992, taking time out to perform in film and theatre, and pursue management consulting and fundraising projects. His final fundraising project was the 1992 Great American Race, and led to an offer by the Segerstrom’s to launch the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Costa Mesa by the Orange County Performing Arts Center. But, after undergoing several surgeries between 1992 and 1993 and deteriorating to the level of 7th grade, he was not able to carry this out. He plans were to focus on sports & entertainment.
In his first job out of school, Stephen opened a nuclear medicine department for the Terre Haute Regional Hospital in Indiana, heading it for a year. He later moved to Orange County, California in 1978 and worked at Hoag Memorial Hospital until 1982. While at Hoag and suffering from a childhood neuromuscular disorder, he applied new mind-body techniques that led to him overcoming a lifelong allergy to aspirin, and then the ill effects of this disorder. Soon he became able to “read” illness in many of his cancer, heart disease, and chronically ill patients. In 16 years of patient care work in nuclear medicine, he worked up some 15,000 patients, providing intuitive reads in perhaps one-third of these. Today, a lot of his free-form Afro-Cuban percussion work, discoveries in drumming, invention of his DiaCeph Test, and facilitation of drum circles is due in part to intuitive work.
Stephen’s music experience began at age 6 with piano, and led to vocal study and touring with a Cincinnati voice company at age 10 (1965). His most noteworthy performance was his “Red River Valley” solo on stage at the Dayton Opera House in 1966. Years later, he was in the supporting cast of “Music Man” at the Laguna Playhouse. Between 1987-89, he also held bit parts in film, and performed vocally in recitals. Today, he mostly performs as a percussionist in drums circles or with his all drummer band, Phat Rhythm Section. He is organizer of the Orange County Drum Circle Meetup, which hosts community drum circles.
Stephen was married from 1980 to 1985, and has one son, Nicholas. From 1987 to 1996, he coached and assisted on 20 little league baseball and soccer teams that provided an opportunity to explore various methods of assessment, managing, and motivating others, and to work with kids with developmental and learning disabilities. In the mid-1980s, he became active in fundraising for youth programs, arts programs, hospitals, and chambers, and later set up the sponsorship program for Foothill Hill School baseball, albeit while still recovering from his brain injury and hydrocephalus, an adventure in of itself.
His formal education consist of an A. S. from the University of Cincinnati, a B. S. from the University of Phoenix, and he has studied music, film, and theatre at UCLA, South Coast Repertory, Orange Coast College, and private schools in Orange County and Los Angeles. His initial mind/body and mindfulness study began in 1973 at the University of Cincinnati while in pre-med, continued into the 1980s, and led to the study of hydrocephalus, CNS shunt devices, FDA regulatory policy, cognition, sensory integration, assistive technology, music and the brain, and brain wave entrainment after his 1992 brain injury. He completed Arthur Hull’s Drum Circle Facilitation training in 2005.
He is a past board member of the National Hydrocephalus Foundation, past member of the Orange County Bar Association, past member of Toastmasters, Foothill High School Baseball foundation, Hoag Hospital fundraising committees, Costa Mesa Chamber and Arts on the Green, and Life Science Industry Council (LINC). He is known by those close to him as "MacGyver" or "The Professor," and more recently as "Professor Mac" via the domain www.ProfessorMac.net
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