Featured Speakers

Sue Klebold (Colorado) is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two gunmen responsible for the Columbine High School shootings of April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Ms. Klebold remained out of the public eye while struggling with devastating grief and humiliation. Her search for understanding would span over fifteen years during which she volunteered for suicide prevention organizations, questioned experts, talked with fellow survivors of loss and examined the crucial intersection between mental health problems and violence. As a result of her exploration, Sue emerged a passionate advocate, dedicated to the advancement of mental health awareness and intervention.

Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer (Minnesota) is the founder and CEO of Alia, innovations for people and systems impacted by childhood trauma. Alia is building a Proof of Concept that public child welfare agencies can serve as primary prevention agencies with a newly redesigned purpose of keeping children safe with, not from, their families. Ameila and her team believe that what all children need most is uninterrupted sense of belonging that only their family can provide. Most recently, Amelia was named one of People Magazine's "25 Women Changing the World" in 2018. In 2015, Amelia was named as a Bush Foundation Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow. Amelia and Team Alia are leading a national movement to bring together child welfare innovators and those with lived experience to build a better way, together!

Family Panel Facilitators

Corey B. Best (Florida) is first a dedicated father. Originally from D.C., he currently calls Florida home. This is where Corey began his transformation into adaptive leadership training, community organizing, authentic family engagement, race equity, primary prevention and highlighting "good enough parenting". Using his personal parenting and leadership journey to help others led Corey to be recognized with the 2016 Casey Family Programs Excellence for Children national award.

Julia Jean-Francois, LCSW, PhD (New York), oversees Center for Family Life's (CFL) family counseling and foster care programs, community resource center, employment services and cooperative business development. She has extensive experience in child welfare and mental health services and she teaches research methods and ethno-cultural methods in social work practice at the New York University School of Social Work and Rutgers School of Social Work. She received her MSW from New York University and PhD from Columbia University School of Social Work.

Exclusive Screening

Broken Places by film maker Roger Weisberg

Why are some children permanently damaged by early adversity while others are able to thrive? To help answer this question, filmmaker Roger Weisberg dug into his extensive film archives to update a few of the stories of the abused and neglected children he filmed decades ago. Viewers are given a unique time-lapse perspective on how the trauma that these children experienced shaped their lives as adults. BROKEN PLACES interweaves these longitudinal narratives with commentary from a few nationally renowned experts in neurobiology and early childhood development in order to illuminate the devastating impact of childhood adversity as well as the factors that can foster resilience.