Christina D. Bethell, PhD, MBA, MPH, Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Founding Director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, Nova Scholar. For the past 35 years, Dr. Bethell has built her work and career around an intentional goal to catalyze health care and public health transformation at the policy, systems, and practice levels. This has been driven by an unwavering focus on advancing a whole-person, whole-famil,y and whole-community model of care that engages patients and the public, is transparent, continuously learning,g and collaborative. Dr. Bethell has been a national leader in the development of policy, practice, and research applications of population health and systems performance measurement and family and community-centered improvement methods.

Diana Fishbein, Senior Scientist, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill, President & Co-Director of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives, Nova Scholar. Her research supports the premise that underlying neurobiological mechanisms interact with the quality of our psychosocial experiences and environmental contexts to alter trajectories either toward or away from risk behaviors. She has published extensively and serves in an advisory capacity for federal and state government bodies as well as several universities and organizations. Given the inherent translational nature of this research, she founded and directs the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives (NPSC), a national organization dedicated to the transfer of knowledge from the basic sciences to practices in real-world settings and public health policies.

Demetrius Geiger, MPH, is a passionate advocate for health equity, birth equity, and reproductive justice. She attained her Master of Public Health from Morehouse School of Medicine and currently serves as a Program Manager under the Equity and Impact Department of Creating Healthier Communities (CHC).

Beatrice Beebe, PhD, is Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry), College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University; Division of Child & Adolescent Pschiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute. She directs a basic research lab on mother-infant communication. She is faculty at several psychoanalytic institutes, and she has a private practice for adults and mother-infant pairs. She is author or coauthor of six books. The most recent is The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book: Origins of Attachment (Beebe, Cohen & Lachman, Norton, 2016).

Joshua Liston-Zawadi, CHW, owner and founder of Melanated Daddy, is a fatherhood and mental health advocacy platform that celebrates the process of parenting and unpacking trauma to heal in order to be intentional figures in the lives of their children. Joshua is a proud Milwaukee native who prioritizes community, fatherhood, and mental health. He celebrates the process of family and community building by using his platform and work to model how to be an intentional figure in the lives of their children.  Joshua Zawadi is also the man behind the Dad Doula and Dad Connect programs.

Deborah McNelis, Founder of Brain Insights, LLC. where the Neuro-Nurturing® model was developed. She started her career as a kindergarten teacher. She then created a community-based organization called Family Network and was the president of The Partners organization. She also coordinated an Even Start Family Literacy program and was an instructor for the early childhood associate degree at a technical college.

Bill Barberg, President and Founder of InsightFormation, Inc., a Minnesota-based consulting and technology company that helps communities, regions, and states address complex social and health issues that require multi-stakeholder collaboration.  

Bill was selected to write the chapter on “Implementing Population Health Strategies” for the book, “Solving Population Health Problems through Collaboration” (Routledge, 2017). His recommendations for using strategy maps is featured as a core recommendation in the new report by the National Academy of Public Administration.   Bill recently co-authored a paper for the Journal of Change Management on “Leading Social Transformations to Create Public Value and Advance the Common Good”.   He is also a co-author of the paper, The Future of Public Service and Strategy Management at Scale, feature in Policy Quarterly. 

Carey Sipp (Moderator) is a dedicated community builder and solutions journalist focused on positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) and their impact on brain development and health. As a volunteer, she directs strategic partnerships for PACEs Connection (PACES Connection.com). 

Carey recently started a new position as the director of nonprofit partnerships for Creating Healthier Communities (CHCImpact.org), supporting health equity through workplace giving and community-based initiatives. 

For almost a decade, Carey has engaged communities in addressing childhood trauma, linking it to systemic issues such as poverty and racism. Since 2020, she has emphasized the importance of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) in preventing adult mental illness.

Passionate about early brain development and preventing developmental trauma, Carey advocates for preconception education and improved support for pregnant women and caregivers during critical developmental periods, in particular, the “fourth trimester”.

Carey believes workplaces can help prevent child abuse and neglect and domestic violence by providing living wages and supports such as paid family leave and supported childcare, ultimately benefiting the businesses, their employees, and their communities.

Her 2007 book, “The TurnAround Mom”, a re-parenting and parenting guide for survivors of addiction and abuse, was published by Health Communications, Inc., publishers of “The Chicken Soup for the Soul” series. She regularly speaks on PACEs science, recovery issues, and the importance of asking for help. She is the deeply grateful mother of two adult children living their dreams in Montana.