Our panel
Dr. Christopher Willard (chairing the panel): He’s a clinical psychologist, author, and consultant based in Massachusetts. He’s presented two TEDx events, had work featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Mindful.org, and teaches at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Melissa Merrick: Melissa is President and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America (PCA America), the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect. She has more than 20 years of clinical, research, and leadership experience related to the etiology, course, and prevention of child abuse and neglect.
Jen Moffitt, RN, CNM, MBCPTc: Jen is the director of community partnerships at Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP), an evidence-based program for expectant parents that integrates mindfulness skills and practice with childbirth and parenting education.
Susan Kaiser Greenland: Susan is a best-selling author and an internationally recognized leader in teaching mindfulness and meditation to children, teens, parents, and professionals. She developed the Inner Kids model while volunteering in public schools teaching secular mindfulness. Inner Kids is a hybrid of classical mindfulness and meditation practices adapted for children and one of the first mindfulness programs in education. Susan and her husband, the author Seth Greenland, founded The Inner Kids Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that taught secular mindfulness in schools and community-based programs in the greater Los Angeles area from 2001 through 2009. Research on the Inner Kids elementary school program was published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology.
Joshua Sparrow: Joshua is executive director of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center (BTC) in the Division of Development of Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he also holds an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Sparrow’s care in the 1990s for children hospitalized for severe psychiatric disturbances, often associated with physical and sexual abuse, and for developmental delays aggravated by social and economic deprivation, prompted his interest in the social determinants of health, and community-based prevention and health promotion. He is principal investigator on numerous foundation grants and has lectured nationally and internationally, written numerous scholarly papers, as well as books and articles for the general public. He has advised government agencies, nonprofits, and philanthropies, is a board member of Parents as Teachers and serves on the advisory boards of the Association for State and Tribal Home Visiting Initiative and Rapid Response Virtual Home Visiting.
Rebecca Parlakian: As Senior Director at ZERO TO THREE, Rebecca Parlakian leads a project portfolio on child development, parenting, and high quality teaching. She leads Zero to Three’s mindfulness initiative, and has co-authored five curricula for parents and professionals, including the Early Connections parent café curriculum and Problem Solvers, an early math curriculum. Rebecca holds a Master’s degree in early childhood special education from the George Washington University and has served as adjunct faculty with the university for the last ten years.
Monday 17 July
9am PST / 5pm BST