The #Reframe Conference: Inner Landscapes & Media Futures
Event Information
Event description
Description
This is a public event designed for those who embrace, and work at, the intersection of ideas and for those wanting to connect with leading figures at Sundance, On Being podcast, Harvard Neurology, Stanford Design School, and elsewhere -- in an intimate setting. You may be a writer, therapist, designer, journalist, physician, social worker, activist, film director, entrepreneur, technologist, or other cross-disciplinary lover. Join us for morning talks and afternoon workshops and a day of community and deep, meaningful conversation.
Tentative Schedule:
9:30am - Registration
10am - Opening Remarks - Jenara Nerenberg, Journalist, Founder, The Neurodiversity Project
10:10am - Casper ter Kuile, Director, On Being Impact Lab
10:30am - Joel Salinas, Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, author, Mirror Touch: A Memoir of Synesthesia & The Secret Life of the Brain
10:50am - Kamal Sinclair, Director, Sundance New Frontier Lab, Founder, Making a New Reality
11:10 Break
11:30 - Jenara Nerenberg - The Neurodiversity Project
11:50 - Rev angel Kyodo williams, Founder, Center For Transformative Change, author, Being Black, co-author Radical Dharma
12:10 - Conversation w/ Rev angel
12:30 Lunch
2:00pm - Media & Reframing Narratives Panel:
-Lakshmi Sarah, author, Crafting Stories for Virtual Reality
-Kamal Sinclair, Director, Sundance Institute New Frontier, Founder, Making a New Reality
-Tina Sacks, filmmaker and author, Invisible Visits: Black Middle Class Women in the American Healthcare System, Professor, UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare
-Shawn Taylor, Pop Culture Collaborative Senior Fellow, educator and writer
2:40pm The New "Mental Health" Panel:
-Nidhi Berry, MSW, LSWAIC, psychotherapist and former Editorial Director of Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution
-Ravi Chandra, M.D. psychiatrist and advisor, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)
-Joel Salinas, M.D. Neurologist and author, Mirror Touch: A Memoir of Synesthesia & The Secret Life of the Brain
-Doug Vakoch, President of METI and editor, Psychology of Space Exploration (NASA)
3:20pm "The Mountain of Should" short film by Brady Gill
3:30pm Book Chat with author and illustrator, Liz Fosslien, of No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work
4pm Ritual Design Lab w/ Kursat Ozenc & Margaret Hagan of Stanford d. School
4:40pm Leading With Humanity Workshop w/ Rania Adwan & Ben Perreau of SY Partners
5:20pm Inner Activity VR Demo & Talk w/ Anshul Pendse
5:45pm Closing Remarks - Jenara Nerenberg
*For Pre-conference Talk w/ Gabor Mate on March 11th in San Francisco, you must purchase joint tickets. He will be appearing only on the 11th.
Re-imagining what it means to “be well,” The Neurodiversity Project has assembled leading figures from the Sundance Film Institute, Harvard Neurology, award-winning On Being podcast, and Rev angel Kyodo williams' Center for Transformative Change in order to #reframe our conceptions of what we currently call "wellbeing."
What new stories are we in dire need of? What does a Harvard neurologist focused on synesthesia have in common with a Sundance Institutue Director focused on virtual reality? In the corners of all our respective fields, there are innovators literally creating new definitions, maps, guidelines, and experiences that take us out of old boxes, categories and diagnostic checklists. Will the fields of medicine and psychiatry as we currently know them survive and how do journalists cover these emerging beats?
Join us for a day of groundbreaking sessions with leaders flying in from across the country to share their stories of new frontiers and practical applications, living into new notions of what it means to be well. Be inspired with leading media directors, designers, researchers, activists, artists, and scientists. Find fellow innovators who are re-inventing intersections in their daily lives, sharing heartfelt personal stories, and why new visions and definitions are needed.
What have we lost in our basic fabric and how do we get it back? We will put the pieces back together, re-connecting the web of life supports that are needed to keep us all in joyful emotional health. Science, art, literature, activism, and celebration all have their part to play. Ready to walk into a doctor's office and meet with a storyteller for part of your treatment?
Speakers:
Kamal Sinclair is the creator of Making a New Reality and the Sundance Institute Director of New Frontier Labs, a cross-disciplinary and transmedia project elevating the intersection of new emerging artists and technology, film, activism, virtual and augmented reality, music and live performance. One of her projects, Question Bridge, facilitates dialogue between black men from diverse and contending backgrounds and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine black male identity in America. Previously a performer with STOMP, she can often be found at MIT, Sundance, the National Film Board of Canada, Google, the Oakland Museum of California, and the LA Film Festival.
Casper ter Kuile is On Being's Executive Director at the On Being Impact Lab, co-founder of How We Gather, and co-host of the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. He is a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, where he jointly earned a degree with the Harvard Kennedy School and his imaginative work is often covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe and elsewhere. Originally from England, he now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his husband.
Dr. Joel Salinas is a Harvard neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, founder of the Salinas Lab, and author of Mirror Touch: A Memoir of Synesthesia and the Secret Life of the Brain. A behavioral neurologist, he specializes in neuropsychiatry and the intersection of social relationships and mental wellness. A physician with synesthesia himself, he literally feels what other people feel and chronicles the experience in his book. Raised in Nicaragua and Miami, he speaks to wide audiences including Cannes, TEDx, and the International Association of Synesthetes, Artists, and Scientists.
Rev Angel Kyodo Williams is the author of Being Black and co-author of Radical Dharma and is the Zen-trained founder of the Center for Transformative Change. She is an internationally-acclaimed teacher educating the mindfulness community about white privilege, race, trauma, healing, and belonging. With a style that is both fierce and gentle, she is a highly sought-after speaker.
With afternoon design sessions on navigating bias, neurodiversity, mental health, workplace culture, and ritual design facilitated by Stanford's Ritual Design Lab and the innovative award-winning SY Partners.
Kürsat Özenç is a designer and an innovation consultant. He creates tools and services for experts and everyday people. He leads the Ritual Design Lab initiative at Stanford d.school, where he runs experiments with students and partner organizations on personal, team and human-robot rituals. He also teaches service design as part of the Stanford Legal Design Lab.
His work on rituals has appeared in Atlantic magazine and on the Canadian Public Radio. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Sabanci University, and Middle East Technical University. He’s originally from the Cappadocia region, Turkey.
His work on rituals has appeared in Atlantic magazine and on the Canadian Public Radio. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Sabanci University, and Middle East Technical University. He’s originally from the Cappadocia region, Turkey.
Rania Adwan is fixated on making the world a better place. In her work as Strategy Director at SYPartners, Rania applies equal parts innovation and creativity to tackle some of business’ most pressing challenges. Prior to SYP, Rania boldly influenced issues from police reform to post-disaster recovery to anti-corruption throughout her stints as a journalist, governmental policy advisor, and PricewaterhouseCoopers strategist. Rania holds a master’s degree in international relations and security studies from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Cardiff University.
Ben Perreau is a Strategy Director for SYPartners in San Francisco. He got started in the music industry, first as a producer for Virgin Radio, and then led a transformation of NME.com, which became the world’s biggest music website of its time. Ben went on to lead Digital Product Strategy for Europe’s largest media companies—including Sky, Global Radio and the BBC—and has founded multiple companies, including his first digital business at age 19. Along the way, Ben has been a consultant, university lecturer, and writer for publications such as Wired, The Guardian, and The Times.
Nidhi Berry, MSW, LSWAIC is a clinical social worker, editor, and content strategist, who believes that the stories we tell, both fictionalized and real, can be a powerful force for healing, development of identity, and the creation of a life aligned with one's goals and values. She began her career in publishing and new media at Random House, HarperCollins, and Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution. After developing a desire for more intimate work with people and their stories, Nidhi earned a Master of Social Work from the University of Washington and now serves as a psychotherapist at Asian Counseling and Referral Service in Seattle, WA, where she also advocates to raise awareness of mental wellness in underserved communities. Nidhi continues to provide content strategy, publishing consultancy, and editing services to diverse clients with powerful stories that need telling.
Liz Fosslien is the co-author and illustrator of No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotion at Work. She is responsible for content at Humu, an organization that drives behavioral change through nudges. Previously, Liz designed and facilitated organizational culture workshops for leaders at Google, Facebook, Nike, and Stanford. Her data visualization and writing projects have appeared in CNN, NPR, The Financial Times, and The Economist.
Brady Gill, "Mountain of Should." One of the co-creators of Custom Camps and Camp Anywhere, Brady creates programming that combines the playfulness of childhood with the growing complexity of how to be a happy, fulfilled adult. Through his camps, Modern Fables, and work in professional development, Brady is doing everything he can to make the world a more playful, connected place. Visit him at bradygillplay.com.
Lakshmi Sarah is a journalist, educator and author with a focus on immigration, migration, identity and the arts. She has produced content for newspapers, radio and magazines from Ahmedabad, India to Los Angeles, California including AJ+, KQED, Die Zeit Online and The New York Times. Crafting Stories for Virtual Reality, a book she co-wrote with Melissa Bosworth, published in 2018. She was an Oculus Launch Pad grant recipient and member of YouTube’s VR Creator Lab in LA and has presented for the Online News Association, SXSW and BinderCon since co-founding Tiny World Productions, an innovative immersive journalism studio. As a summer lecturer for the UC Berkeley minor program, and Berkeley’s Advanced Media Institute, she often teaches courses on multimedia and virtual reality. Her teaching and reporting have brought her to Hamburg, Germany as a Fulbright Fellow and Berlin as a Arthur F. Burns Fellow with Die Zeit Online. She is a graduate of Pitzer College and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and divides her time between Berkeley, Berlin and southern India.
Tina Sacks is an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare and the author of Invisible Visits: Black Middle Class Women in the American Healthcare System. She received her PhD in social welfare at the University of Chicago. Her fields of interest include racial inequities in health, social determinants of health, and poverty and inequality. Professor Sacks focuses on the how macro-structural forces, including structural discrimination and immigration, affect women’s health. Professor Sacks’ work has been published in Race and Social Problems, Qualitative Social Work, Family and Community Health, Health Affairs, and MSNBC News. In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Sacks collaborates with her husband, Carlos Javier Ortiz, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, on issues affecting Black and Latino communities. Their film, We All We Got (2015), appeared at the Tribeca, LA, and St. Louis International Film Festivals. The New Yorker magazine published their documentary on the Great Migration, A Thousand Midnights in 2016.
Ravi Chandra is a writer for the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) and a Board Certified Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (DFAPA) trained at Brown, Stanford, and UCSF, providing care (therapy and/or medications) for people suffering from psychiatric conditions and life stressors, especially difficult work and personal relationship issues, losses and life trauma. In 2018, he started offering workshops in mindful self-compassion (MSC) and compassion cultivation (CCT). Sign up for details at www.sflovedojo.org. He is the author of Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks.
Douglas Vakoch, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist whose work ranges from inner space to outer space, and who has edited books with such diverse titles as Psychology of Space Exploration (NASA), On Orbit and Beyond(Springer), Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment (Springer),Women and Nature? (Routledge), and The Drake Equation: Estimating the Prevalence of Extraterrestrial Life through the Ages (Cambridge University Press). He is president of METI, a nonprofit scientific organization based in San Francisco with the namesake mission of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence—transmitting powerful, intentional radio signals to nearby stars, in the hope of getting a reply. Through METI, Vakoch also supports the sustainability of human civilization on multigenerational timescales—a prerequisite for a scientific project that could take centuries or millennia to succeed, given the vast distances between the stars. He has been featured in monthly magazines of the American Psychological Association and the British Psychological Society and is an elected member of the International Institute for Space Law and the International Astronautical Union. He serves as general editor of Springer’s Space and Society book series and Lexington Books’ Ecocritical Theory and Practice book series.He frequently appears in film and television documentaries (http://imdb.me/vakoch), where he explores the hunt for life in the cosmos, including the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). His expertise includes space exploration, the societal impact of science, and environmental threats to humanity's long-term survival. His work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Nature, Science, Der Spiegel, WELT, and WIRED, and he has been interviewed on radio and television shows on the BBC, NPR, PBS, ABC, The Science Channel, The History Channel, Arte, and many others. He was featured in the film The Visit, which premiered at Sundance, and in Calling E.T., which had its American premiere at SXSW.
Anshul Pendse is an immersive experience designer with a keen interest in bridging the gap between entertainment and therapy using immersive media and multi-sensory technologies. He has a background in animation and visual effects, working on films such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and X-MEN: First Class.He holds an MFA in Interactive Media & Game Design from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he developed his MFA Thesis ‘Inner Activity’ as an entertainment based therapy modality using virtual reality and multi sensory technologies. Anshul is currently a doctoral candidate in Media Arts & Technology at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research will focus on using entertainment design and technology embedded with proven therapy modalities to create experiences that induce positive states of trance, flow and heightened awareness, which in turn facilitate better health, wellness and mindfulness.
Margaret Hagan is the Director of the Legal Design Lab and a lecturer at Stanford Institute of Design (the d.school). She was a fellow at the d.school from 2013-2014, where she launched the Program for Legal Tech & Design, experimenting in how design can make legal services more usable, useful & engaging. She teaches a series of project-based classes, with interdisciplinary student groups tackling legal challenges through user-focused research and design of new legal products and services. She also leads workshops to train legal professionals in the design process, to produce client-focused innovation. Margaret graduated from Stanford Law School in June 2013. She served as a student fellow at the Center for Internet & Society and president of the Stanford Law and Technology Association. While a student, she built the game app Law Dojo to make studying for law school classes more interactive & engaging. She also started the blog Open Law Lab to document legal innovation and design work. Margaret holds an AB from the University of Chicago, an MA from Central European University in Budapest, and a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in International Politics. She is originally from Pittsburgh.
Shawn Taylor is a writer, university lecturer, and scholar of Afrofuturism and the ethno-speculative, geek/pop culture, mythology and folklore. He strives to engage in critical pop cartography. This has taken the form of his hosting art installations exploring ideas of media representation, to being a founding author of www.thenerdsofcolor.org. He is also one of the founders of the Black Comix Arts Festival, a festival that highlights and promotes artists on the margins of the mainstream comic book industry. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Pop Culture Collaborative. Recently, he has been acting as a creative consultant to several media companies.
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Sidewalk Talk will be providing onsite listening for all attendees and guests! Read more about them here.
And more, stay tuned for announcements.
We will convene at the International House at UC Berkeley. Car sharing is advised.
For press pass inquiries, email community@divergentlit.com
#Reframe: Inner Life & Media Futures
Saturday, March 23rd
International House, Berkeley
Early registration encouraged
Thank you to our friends & promotional partners:
Organizer Jenara Nerenberg & The Neurodiversity Project
Organizer of The #Reframe Conference: Inner Landscapes & Media Futures
Jenara Nerenberg is the founder of The Neurodiversity Project and an international psychology, innovation, and mental health reporter for the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution, Garrison Institute, Fast Company, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health and UC Berkeley and is the author of Divergent Mind. Her work was featured as one of ten "brave new ideas" at the Aspen Institute's Aspen Ideas Festival, as she is dedicated to reframing mental differences in media narratives and implementing actionable change to support and celebrate the neurodivergent community.
