Carlene Thissen
Early Life
Carlene Thissen is a singer-songwriter, and author, born on June 28, 1950, in northwest New Jersey. She is now in Naples, Florida, where Carlene Thissen dedicates herself to performing, speaking, songwriting, singing and playing piano and guitar at house concerts, clubs, restaurants, festivals and charity events. Carlene Thissen also serves the community as Coordinator of a Farm Labor Supervisor Training program at the University of Florida’s Research & Education Center in Immokalee. Immokalee, a SW Florida agriculture town, has been the inspiration for two of Carlene's books and several songs.
Career
Carlene Thissen performed in the 1960s and 70s as a young guitar-playing folk singer in northwest New Jersey, doing songs by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Melanie. Carlene Thissen says the best three days of her life were spent at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969 and she presents a multi-media program today about that experience.
As she explains in her autobiographical song, Back There Again, this Woodstock hippie girl, “…cut her hair and got a career, and lost herself for 30 odd years.” Forgetting her dreams of being a doctor working in ghettos, she became a successful business woman, well known for speeches, articles and books about supermarket marketing technology. Carlene Thissen ended her corporate career as Vice President for a large market research company in Chicago, became an independent international consultant and then moved to Naples, Florida, and began her writing and singing career.
