Highlights from this session:

• How to adhere to your values while passionately pursuing your life’s purpose
• Understanding interdependence as adults and parents, and how to pass that knowledge on
• The importance of art and music to the collective healing movement

Alanis Morissette is a widely influential singer-songwriter with 14 Canadian Juno Awards, 7 Grammys, and over 75 million albums sold. She’s known for her debut “JAGGED LITTLE PILL,” and has released nine more acclaimed albums. Beyond music and acting, she’s committed to spiritual and psychological well-being, supporting causes like recovery and female empowerment. In 2016, she launched a podcast where she shares her insights. Her multifaceted career highlights her impact across multiple platforms and subjects.

Highlights from this session:

• Lessons from being raised by Holocaust survivors
• The healing power of sharing in groups and seeing our experiences reflected in others
• The need for more people to recognize the consequences of hate

American author and journalist Helen Epstein is a daughter of Holocaust survivors and is best known for her non-fiction trilogy Children of the Holocaust; Where She Came From; and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma. Born in Prague and raised in New York City, she lectures in the Americas and Europe. Most recently, she edited her mother’s memoir Franci’s War and wrote Getting Through It, a medical memoir of surviving surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation to treat GYN cancer. She is now working on a book about her life writing non-fiction.

Highlights from this session:

• Ayo’s personal story leading up to the co-founding of Black Lives Matter
• The courage inherent in addressing our own wounds to end cycles of harm
• The power of activism in acknowledging shared pain and healing collective trauma

Ayọ Tometi is an award-winning human rights champion, social entrepreneur, and a co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter, the movement nominated for a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. Ayọ is the youngest of the three Black women who co-founded the #BlackLivesMatter platform, and in 2021 she became the first woman recipient of the International Peace Honors Award. Ayọ has graced multiple TIME Magazine covers, including 100 Most of the Influential Women of the Last Century and 100 Most Influential People of the Year.  She is widely respected for her track record, and has been hailed as a new civil rights leader by those in the  grassroots and major media outlets such as CNN, BBC and the LA Times.  Ayọ is a trusted advisor to several organizations and initiatives in the public and private sector. An ardent futurist Ayọ has committed her life to joyfully and rigorously engaging people in both imagining and forging a better world together.

Highlights from this session:

• How toxic individualism harms us and connection with the collective heals us
• The benefits of affinity groups and the power of centering marginalized people
• Defining legacy burdens and their role in the world’s current major conflicts

Fatimah Finney, MA, LMHC  is a skilled licensed mental health counselor and a trainer at the Internal Family Systems (IFS) Institute. She supports a diverse client group as an EAP Counselor with a focus on workplace and relational trauma. Fatimah is a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory. Her chapter on using IFS with Black clients will be published in the upcoming book, Altogether US, which is available for preorder now.  She is a firm believer in the power of collective healing through community care and seeks to eradicate the systems of oppression that block the possibility of it.

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems, a highly effective, evidence-based therapeutic model that de-pathologizes the multi-part personality. His IFS Institute offers training for professionals and the general public. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has published five books, including No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model.

Highlights from this session:

• The role of a storyteller within generational trauma, and the tradition of oral historians in Native culture
• The ongoing traumatic impact of forcing Native children into “residential” schools
• How to root yourself in your spirit as a form of wellness and an antidote to colonialism

Julian Brave NoiseCat, writer and filmmaker, is a visiting fellow of the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan and a fellow of the Type Media Center. He is currently working on his first book, We Survived the Night, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf, as well as directing his first documentary, which follows the search for unmarked graves at the Indian residential school NoiseCat’s family was sent to in Williams Lake, British Columbia.

Highlights from this session:

• The need for trauma-informed updates to adult and juvenile criminal justice systems
• Transitioning from retributive justice to restorative justice
• The transformative power of safe spaces to share and process collective trauma

Flavia Valgiusti is a lawyer, former judge, researcher, and social psychologist with expertise in trauma-informed law, restorative processes, and juvenile criminology. She is a professor of neuroscience and law and a UNICEF consultant. Her work involved training professionals in the judicial, social services, and NGO sectors. She founded the Children’s Advocates pro bono program at the Bar Association and currently directs the Bar Association’s Institute for Neuroscience and Law.