About Us

The Story of Scissortail

North Texas Kids is a division of Scissortail Publishing, LLC which started in the Summer of 2001. The original concept for the magazine comes from our good friend Jennifer Martin of Martinhouse Publishing and Boulder County Kids. Owner Minette Riordan saw the need for a similar resource in our area and, as the mother of two young children felt the personal need for a more intellectual creative outlet.

Since our first issue the publication has grown by leaps and bounds. We started as a quarterly publication with 20 pages and a distribution of 20,000 per quarter. Since then we have grown to 48 pages, 12 issues per year, a distribution of over 50,000 and a small staff.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide the parents and children of the area with a guide to all of the resources available to them in the area. We strive to give our readership thoughtful, useful, and activity-based information in an easy-to-read format, and to provide it for free. North Texas Kids dedicates a part of every publication to supporting the county's non-profit organizations and events, either through article space, advertisements, or event listings. Finally, our mission is to be financially, environmentally, spiritually, and socially responsible towards our associates, our readers, and our community.

Who We Are

Biography, Minette Riordan, Ph.D., CCP

Minette's passion for connecting people to each other is deeply rooted in her belief that it is our connection to spirit, to self and to others that is the foundation of true happiness. Over the years, Minette has found many unique ways of helping people to create both inner connection to their higher self and powerful connections to others around them. Through Minette's work as a teacher, a speaker, a community volunteer and a business owner, she has educated thousands of people on the subjects of communication, commitment, and connection.

Minette is passionate about education as her own college history shows. She has a B.A. in Spanish from Texas A&M University and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. While in college, she traveled to Latin America and Europe. These experiences were instrumental in opening her to the potential for human interaction and connection. Minette used her personal experience to write an essay that was powerful enough to earn her a full scholarship and admission to a doctoral program in Spanish at Stanford University. While at Stanford, she won two travel scholarships to do research in Mexico City on contemporary women poets.

Minette has a Ph.D. From Stanford University in Spanish. She has taught college, high school and adult enrichment classes on a variety of subjects including Spanish language, literature, women's literature, world religions and creative writing. Before attending Stanford, she worked for Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich as an editorial assistant helping to create high school textbooks for teaching Spanish. Before starting her own business, Minette taught at a private high school in northern California for troubled teens. While there, Minette won a National Endowment for the Humanities award for Spanish teachers and spent a summer studying at the University of Oregon.

Now a wife and parent of two young children, Minette's focus has shifted to her own family and to raising happy, healthy and successful children. For the past eight years, Minette has published North Texas Kids magazine. She established this publication as a means of learning more about her community and what services were available to families. She has used her publication as a way to educate parents and to simplify parenting in an increasingly complex world where parents are raising their children in isolation, from their extended families and often from other parents in their community.

Minette is also a Certified Parent Coach, a popular and growing field of personal coaching that is getting a great deal of attention in the press. Through both private coaching, group work and speaking, Minette helps other parents pinpoint the challenges in their relationships with their children and find creative ways to improve communication and build connection. She is a popular and well-received public speaker with local mom's groups and business organizations. Minette is the kind of person that jumps into life with both feet. After launching her business in 2002, she quickly became involved in the Plano Chamber of Commerce and within two years was running the Women's Division, an active group of over 100 women. She also held leadership positions or board positions at several other networking organizations and charitable organizations. She recently launched her own networking group called WEBB - Women Engaged in Building Business, a networking and educational group for women business owners in the Dallas area. She is well known in her community of Plano, Texas for being the go-to person when someone needs information, resources or guidance. In 2009, she was named the Small Business Owner of the Year by the Plano Chamber of Commerce.

Minette is always interested in speaking opportunities: if your group is interested in hearing a dynamic speaker and successful small-business owner, send her an email - minette@northtexaskids.com