Workshops - Virtual
Description
Invitation to Ease: Leadership and Well-Being will be a virtual interactive workshop. Through didactics, small and large group discussions participants learn individual, relational, and organizational tools that can be immediately implemented. Psychological principles, body-based practices, and theater arts are woven throughout the workshop to access the wisdom that sits in every participants’ seat.
Learning Objectives:
- Explore personal survival strategies and thriving practices that shape the leadership of organizations navigating the impact of trauma experienced when working with communities affected by gun violence and subway surfing
- Describe a strategic organizational framework for reducing workplace stress and promoting well-being when working with asylum seekers and other systems-involved clients
- Implement simple well-being practices that promote employee engagement
About Your Presenter
Melba Nicholson Sullivan, PhD
Melba Nicholson Sullivan, PhD is a licensed clinical-community psychologist, executive coach, and performing artist. She is CEO of Freedom Flow Solutions, LLC, which reduces workplace stress, promotes employee well-being so that organizations (and their leaders) thrive. Doc Nic is a commitment to individual and collective power. She specializes in understanding how organizations promote human rights. Additional areas of expertise include stress and trauma, leadership and management, and professional development.
Doc Nic has more than 30 years of mental health organizational leadership and training. She served as Director of Community Programs for The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Director of Training for the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture, and Clinical Director for Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City. She earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studied psychology and theater arts at Howard University, and specialized in trauma and global mental health at Duke University and Harvard University respectively. In addition to her academic and theater background, Doc Nic facilitates contemplative practices that have been passed through generations of people of culture for millenia.
Doc Nic co-creates experiences that tap into the wisdom of all participants. She has been featured in essence.com, Shondaland.com, FastCompany, and the New York Times. As a performing artist she writes music, sings and acts. As a “Chillpreneur,” she centers ease, rest, clarity and connection.
Description
Workshop Description: Cultivate strength, harmony, and health through slow, silken movement. This workshop teaches you a traditional qigong sequence – The Eight Brocades – alongside essential qigong philosophy. For centuries, practitioners have used these eight silken forms to balance vital energy, align with the natural world, support the body’s organs and meridian systems, and live grounded, centered, healthy lives.
Learning Objectives: Five elements/phases of qigong: Wood, fire, earth, metal, and water
Five key movement principles in qigong:
- Song 松/鬆 Relaxed
- Zheng 正: Aligned
- Yuan 圆: Round/Centred
- Tong 通: Connect, open
- Zhong 中: Middle, balanced
5 qualities of breathing in Qigong
- Long (长chang)
- Slow (慢man)
- Fine (细 xi)
- Even (均 jun)
- Deep (深 shen)
About Your Presenter
Michelle Quiba
Michelle Quiba was a competitive collegiate dancer, choreographer, and abuse survivor. A Personal Trainer and Group Instructor for over 10 years, she teaches at Pratt Institute, Crunch Signature Gyms, Spotify, and Sephardic Community Center. Michelle was drawn to forms like Qigong, Tai Chi, Yoga, and Somatics, and learned how they shared a similar focus on awareness and reflection. Her mission is to help others tap into the wisdom of their own body, and experience the healing power of movement.
Description
Workshop Description: Through video clips, a didactic lecture, large and small group discussions, and self-reflection, participants will learn about the manifestations of stress and vicarious trauma and build trauma-informed, resiliency, and well-being practices.
Learning Objectives:
- Provide shared language around the connection between stress, trauma, and vicarious trauma
- Support your ability to recognize your own and your staff’s vicarious trauma and develop coping strategies
- Support your ability to recognize your own resilience and vicarious resiliency and help your staff do the same, including enhancing trauma-informed community care.
About Your Presenter
Sherina T. Davis
Sherina T. Davis is from Barbados, West Indies. Sherina is a scholar, facilitator, coach, and training consultant. She defines her role as being a guiding light in a revolutionary era and is the link that fuses the theoretical with the tangible. She feels it is her moral responsibility to work toward combating oppressive entities that oppress people. Sherina supposes' that a person's actions speak to that person's spirit and character. She believes that her active involvement in the community and nationally promotes moral agency. She supposes that we all have unlimited possibilities. She supports clients through a holistic approach [Spirit, Body, and Mind] in creating space for conversations that support clients to take effective actions in personal and professional transformation, achieving potent results and their vision.
Description
Workshop Description: An expert panel will discuss the unique social, emotional, and developmental needs of this population and share best practices. DYCD funds the largest system of services for runaway and homeless youth in the country. The session will explain the RHY continuum of resources and highlight how to access the programs.
About Your Presenters
Moderators:
 Giana Peralta, |
 Derrick Stoudymire, |
Panelists:
 Sebastien Vante, |
 Renata Alexis, |
 Racquel Jones LMSW, |
 Rose Yasonia LMSW, |
 Jason Manizza LMHC, |
Facilitator:
 Nicole Hamilton |
Workshops - In-Person
Description
Workshop Description: How do we promote healing, wellness, and sustainability in times ravaged by war, climate crises, and increasing instability? Dr. Anna Ortega-Williams will use frameworks, such as historical trauma and posttraumatic growth to unearth expanded pathways to well-being. We will draw upon the wisdom of intergenerational land-based healing work in community gardens in NYC as well as the organizing led by Black youth for racial equity and social justice in the United States.
Learning Objectives: Clarify benefits, challenges, opportunities, and unique obstacles to youth development in our times.
- Identify classic positive youth development strategies that are essential and those that need to be "remixed"
- Using the presented frameworks, practice remixing one youth development strategy to meet the needs and opportunities in the participant's organizational and community context.
About Your Presenter
Anna Ortega-Williams, LMSW, PhD
Anna Ortega-Williams, LMSW, PhD is a Black social work scholar, practitioner, organizer, and activist deeply inspired by the healing alchemy of social action and youth development. She has been a social worker rooted in community-based practice since 2001. She is an Assistant Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College in New York City. She is committed to uncovering practice interventions that push the boundary of where micro-level clinical practice ends and macro-level practice begins. Her approach to social work is grounded in cultural humility and centers on anti-racist, intersectional, and anti-oppressive frameworks. Dr. Ortega-William's participatory, social justice-based research focuses on historical trauma, posttraumatic growth, social action, and land-based healing to expand conceptualizations of trauma recovery. As a Black queer mom, born and raised in low-income public housing in the Bronx, she is committed to expanding critical social work practice to expand how we promote joy, healing, social justice, love, deep laughter, and hope.
Description
Workshop Description: This workshop aims to utilize art and guided imagery as effective tools for stress reduction and trauma healing. Through engaging activities and discussion, participants will learn practical strategies to explore their emotional well-being. Join us for an inspiring session that will nurture resilience and foster healing through creativity.
Learning Objectives: By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- understand the benefits of the healing arts
- have utilized simple visual art techniques that can be used for oneself and with others
- have had the opportunity to express thoughts/feelings through the creative process
About Your Presenter
Linda Turner, Visual Artist and Licensed Creative Arts Psychotherapist (LCAT)
Linda Turner is a NYC-based Visual Artist and Licensed Creative Arts Psychotherapist (LCAT) who has worked with a wide range of individuals and groups for 20+ years. Currently, Linda is in private practice treating adults who struggle with complex trauma, anxiety, and depression. Prior to this, she with youth for many years through the Chinatown YMCA, as well as at Catholic Charities, where she was an art therapist and then clinical supervisor. Linda served on the board of NYCCAT (NY Coalition of Creative Arts Therapists) and is president of the LCAT Advocacy Coalition. As a workshop facilitator, Linda is passionate about reconnecting us to the profound value and impact of the creative process. She also has a robust mixed-media art-making practice of her own.
Description
Workshop Description: There is a mental health emergency happening with young masculine bodies of color. This workshop will discuss how this emergency impacts young black and brown boys. Engaging in conversations around anti-black racism, redefining masculinity, stigma, and culturally responsive care will help increase our ability to support young black and brown boys. Learn skills for working with black and brown boys in crisis and holistic approaches to improve mental health access/resources and reduce barriers to address their mental health needs using culturally responsive approaches.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe how young black and brown boys' mental health is challenged by racism.
- Understand and describe how negative perceptions are barriers to appropriate treatment
- Describe successful treatment types for young black and brown boys, both traditional and innovative.
About Your Presenter
Damon Watson, MPH, LPC, Program Director for The Fellowship Initiative
Damon Watson, MPH, LPC (he/him), is a planner and healer currently working as the Program Director for The Fellowship Initiative. Damon has been with Vibrant over 6 years, starting as a Specialized Counselor for the SAMHSA OASAS helpline and the National Football League (NFL) lifeline and growing into supervisory and agency-wide leadership roles. He is a 1st generation college graduate from rural central Virginia and holds a dual bachelor's degree in Psychology and Health & Physical Education from Morehouse College and a Master's degree in Public Health from the University of Virginia with a concentration in Health Policy and Community Advocacy. Damon has been developing person-centered programs with mental health nonprofits for 15 years, with education-based work ranging from counseling in the public school system to implementing and running a private school dedicated to the emotional and academic well-being of adolescents and young adults. In his current role, he collaborates with national and local community programs to provide holistic support to the black and brown young men they serve through local TFI programs. Damon leads a fantastic team of advocates and healers nationwide to provide TFI fellows with resources to support their continued psychological growth. Damon’s commitment to his work honors the power of our individual identities, especially our subjugated identities, as a means to envision a world in which we intentionally disrupt and dismantle cultures of white supremacy that continue to cause harm.
Description
Workshop Description: In this session, we will unpack how trauma impacts youth, and engage with asset-based strategies to support healthy youth development and create healing-centered environments.
Learning Objectives:
- Unpack trauma and the different ways it can show up;
- Grounding in 4 Practices of Healing-Centered Engagement;
- Connect the dots between healing-centered engagement, cultural sustainability, and a restorative framework;
- Uplift examples of where a shift to a healing-centered lens is needed in your youth-serving community
About Your Presenter
Nicole Hamilton
Director of Program Quality + Support
Nicole Hamilton (she/her) is a radical educator, trainer, curriculum designer, youth worker, circle keeper and community builder. Nicole, who is also the Founder of Culturvate Consulting, believes that working in close partnership with schools and organizations builds the trust, transparency and accountability needed to do the hard work of shifting culture. Nicole brings over a decade of experience in direct service provision from her roles as a Program Director of a multi-site after school program, Director of School Based Programs and Partnerships, and a teacher. In her work, she has supported the positive transformation of organizations, programs and schools by leading staff and young people towards a common goal of creating a safer, more equitable and affirming anti-racist and inclusive culture.
Blending the disciplines of circle keeping and coaching, Nicole focuses on laying the preliminary groundwork of shifting hearts and minds through the development of critical consciousness in order to co-create environments that are prepared to embrace the principles of culturally sustaining restorative practice. Nicole works in collaborative partnership with schools and organizations to create pathways leading from punitive, racial and gender biased disciplinary practices towards methods that are more restorative, trauma informed and culturally affirming. Through experiential modeling, development of personalized tools and coaching administrators through the processes of building infrastructure, providing meaningfully resonant professional development, leadership capacity building for all stakeholders through circle keeping and restorative practice, Nicole mobilizes partners to engage in initiatives that engage all stakeholders in cultivating the sustainable practices needed to create lasting changes. Nicole holds a bachelor's degree from NYU and a master’s degree in Youth Studies from CUNY.