Thanks to the generous support of The California Endowment, we've added two new people who'll be working part-time with ACEs Connection Network -- Gail Kennedy and Dana Brown -- to increase support for the work we do in California. In addition, community manager Alicia St. Andrews, who was working part-time, has now contracted to work full-time.
GAIL KENNEDY (here doing yoga in a California vineyard) is a community manager and data specialist for the ACEs Connection Network. Gail has a Masters in Public Health from Columbia University, where she focused on socio-medical sciences, health promotion and disease prevention. For nearly 20 years of her three decades in public health, she worked at the University of California, San Francisco, where she set up and managed international HIV collaborative efforts, assisting countries to collect and use data to respond to the needs of their communities.
Gail's public health interests began while working as an advocate in a child abuse prevention and rape crisis center before her MPH training; her work with ACEs and resiliency research is like coming back to her roots, she says.
Gail joined ACEs Connection Network in May 2015 in a part-time position. She brings to this community her passion for community engagement and facilitation, and her appreciation of the power of getting data into the hands of communities. She is helping think about ways to gather data to help us understand the impact we are having as our network grows, and to help groups access ACE and other relevant data to inform the urgency of an ACEs response. She is developing tools that she hopes will help groups monitor their progress and identify priority areas of focus for outreach. She is also helping communities, organizations and initiatives in Northern and Central California start groups on ACEs Connection. So far, she has helped launch the California Essentials for Childhood Initiative, and the Sacramento County ACEs Connection groups. Others in the pipeline include Napa and El Dorado counties.
DANA BROWN is the new Southern California community manager for ACEs Connection Network. She will be helping communities and organizations start groups on ACEs Connection, and mentor existing groups in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Southern California communities that are currently in the foundational stages of setting up groups on ACEs Connection include San Bernardino, Ventura and Orange counties, and the City of Long Beach.
A social entrepreneur, Dana founded a character development program at Tierrasanta Elementary in San Diego, CA; co-founded Youth Voice and OurSOLES (Our Students of Leadership ~ Empowerment ~ Service); is the project director of TICS (Trauma Informed Community Schools) in City Heights, San Diego; a commissioner on the Commission on Gang Prevention & Intervention; and has been vested with several boards and advisory councils, including the San Diego Trauma Informed Guide Team, HHSA (Health, Human Service Agency) Trauma Informed Systems Integration Champion Work Group, and USD's Character Development Center.
She received the Joy McAllister Advocacy Award from Mental Health America in 2014, President Obama's USA Volunteer Presidential Award in 2013, and the City of San Diego's Human Relations Commission Award in 2009.
Dana says she is living her soul's purpose of co-creating with like-minded individuals our systems change in a socio-ecological model through advocacy, prevention and resiliency building.
Check out the bios of the rest of the ACEs Connection Network team!
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