ResilienceCon 2021 Keynote Speakers

Just-Us: Breaking Down the Prison-Industrial Complex Through Alternative, Transformative, and Community-Based Strategies to Address Gender-Based Harm

by Dr. Val Kalei Kanuha

Val Kalei Kanuha was born and raised in a rural town in Hawaiʻi in the 1950s. She is the daughter of a Native Hawaiian father and Nisei mother. For the past 45 years, Kalei has been an activist, therapist, consultant and researcher with a focus on violence against women and children of color, and the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender and sexual identity. Her research and community interests include use of culturally-based interventions to address gender-based harm, intimate violence in women's same-sex relationships, and using storytelling and story collecting to advance the narratives and experiences of those at the margins.

Kalei and her partner, Kata are older parents of a 5 year old. Thus, they will be required to engage in paid employment beyond when Social Security goes the way of black dial telephones and cash transactions.

Preventing Child Abuse: The Next 10 Years

by Dr. Melissa Merrick

Melissa T. Merrick, PhD, is the President and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America, the nation’s oldest nonprofit organization dedicated to the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect with a robust network of state chapters.  Dr. Merrick has over 18 years of clinical, research, and leadership experience related to the etiology, course, and prevention of child abuse and neglect. Prior to joining PCA America, Dr. Merrick was a Senior Epidemiologist at CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and served on a detail in the Office of the Commissioner at the Children’s Bureau in ACF. In partnership with the HHS Office of Child Abuse and Neglect (OCAN), she served as the Lead Scientist for the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study at CDC for 8 years. Dr. Merrick effectively leverages her clinical and research experiences to effectively communicate and disseminate the critical public health importance of preventing early adversity to key stakeholders, congressional audiences and policymakers, and community members and professionals with diverse priorities, backgrounds, and knowledge.

Dr. Merrick received her BA in psychology, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, and her masters and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from the San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, where she served as a program coordinator for the San Diego site of the Longitudinal Studies on Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) consortium. Dr. Merrick was an NIH-funded Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Miami Child Protection Team (CPT) involved in a multi-site program of research that examined child maltreatment risk and protective factors in families evaluated by CPTs across the state of Florida prior to spending 9 years at the CDC.

"Becoming Woke": Encouraging Critical Consciousness to Prevent Violence and Promote Change

by Dr. Maury Nation

Maury Nation is an associate professor of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University.  His research is focused on developing strategies and interventions that promote positive development and prevent violence among children and adolescents.  This has included research implementing and evaluating community and school-based programs that prevent violence and bullying, promote positive school climate, and reduce racial ethnic disparities in exclusionary discipline.  Most recently his research has focused on the relations between community context and school climate, and the influence these constructs have on student behaviors and student achievement.