Michelle Gladstone -Wade/ Lynda Jensen

The speakers have collaborated for 15 years and have made transformative changes wherever they’ve worked. In this presentation, they will share and facilitate reflections about starting, developing, and nurturing powerful and change-making alliances. Reflection topics will include relationality, story sharing, humility, and habits of mind. 

Patrilie Hernandez

During this session, participants will be guided through how bodies are politicized, serving as a source of oppression or a source of power, or both. Using theory and scholarship from some of the world's greatest thought leaders in body politics, participants will hear historical and present-day examples of how societal hierarchies and dichotomies exist to maintain imbalanced power structures, especially in the pursuit of individual and community health. After examining their own social identities, their proximity to power, and how this shapes discourse around what it means to be 'healthy', participants will be given the tools to reclaim this notion of health and be introduced to the paradigm of body liberation. This session is geared toward public health & nutrition professionals or anyone who is struggling to see themselves in mainstream narratives of health and wellbeing. 

Tony Griego 

Although women have made significant gains in the workplace, they still face thousands of years of cultural and systemic barriers. These barriers are especially steep for women of color as evidenced by stereotypes such as “the angry black woman”, the Latina pay gap, and the “bamboo ceiling” faced by AAPI women leaders. This presentation will highlight some of the challenges and trends women face in the workplace as well as tactics and strategies for Allies to practice to improve recruitment, hold more inclusive meetings, and mentor/sponsor future leaders. By centering intersectionality, the presentation will underscore the additional barriers faced by women and color and ask male allies to consider how our cultures perpetuate harm to all genders. Finally, the presentation will ask attendees to consider how to teach ourselves and future generations of men a new definition of masculinity informed by allyship. 

Isaiah Pickens

The challenges we've all faced over these past few years have illuminated inequities for the first time for some, and further affirmed those inequities for others. This inspiring presentation will provide a foundation of how individual, historical, and intergenerational trauma impacts the way we show up in our most important identities and mental health. This inspiring presentation will provide strategies for supporting individuals and communities transition toward the best version of themselves as we collectively overcome obstacles to social justice and equity. Participants will leave with insight about current events and systems from a psychological perspective and hope for building a more inclusive world, while taking care of mental and emotional wellbeing in the process.