Born in Ukraine, just two months prior to the nuclear power plant explosion of Chernobyl, Petr discovered that he was actively losing his vision at age 9, shortly after his family immigrated to the United States. By age 10, Petr was declared legally blind and continued to lose his sight, losing access to class material and prospects of academic or social success. Petr eventually took up jobs in the construction industry after dropping out of school due to his inability to read printed text. This arrangement was undoubtedly less than ideal and became very unsafe as time went on.

Determined to go beyond the apparent limitations, Petr was able to find the resources and training that would open a path of opportunity in education and a dynamic career adventure. This career journey began with his work in hospice care, after which he went on to teach “It’s Your Health”, an innovative approach to health and wellness at Emory University, his alma mater. He later went on to complete his Wellness Coaching Certification with Wellcoaches Corporation and worked with clients to transform their approach to health and wellness.

Petr’s passion to ensure equal access for people with disabilities also became a great part of his life and lead him to the work he did at the Colorado Center for the Blind in a number of rehabilitation and training roles in their adult and senior programs. Additionally, he was inspired to co-found Socially Accessible, a consulting agency that works with businesses to incorporate diversity/inclusion and “Universal Design” practices in both their hiring process and in the way they service their customers. His commitment to accessibility brought Petr to Charter Communications, where he is currently building accessible employee and customer experiences as Senior Accessibility Manager.

Petr’s true love and passion is to inspire transformational thinking that leads to positive health and desirable behavior outcomes, which has landed him on stages across the US in schools, corporate settings and conferences, sharing a message of empowerment and transformational thinking.

Dr. Lara Zwarun is a scholar whose research expertise is in persuasion and messaging. She is also a proud Ukrainian-American, with a father who escaped from Russian soldiers in World War II and lived in Displaced Persons camps in Germany for years before coming to America.

An Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Missouri St. Louis, Dr. Zwarun traveled to Ukraine in 2015 to conduct research on the role of social media in combating Russian disinformation. Her findings from this trip, as well as the parallels between her family history and what Ukrainians are currently experiencing, give her a uniquely informed perspective on the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia occurring now.

Dr. Zwarun’s work has appeared in journals such as Media Psychology, American Journal of Public Health, and Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. An engaging public speaker, she was selected as a 2019-2020 University of Missouri System Presidential Engagement Scholar to share her research contributions with Missouri residents around the state. She has shared her insights on Ukraine on behalf of the St. Louis Kaplan and Feldman Holocaust Museum, on St. Louis Public Radio, and in other media outlets.

Social Media

UMSL homepage: https://tinyurl.com/LaraZwarunUMSL

Google Scholar: https://tinyurl.com/LaraZGooglescholar

Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Stanford University. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of 48 books, including the 29-volume Oxford Mark Twain; Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices; The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on his Life and Work; and Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee. Professor Fishkin is a past president of the Mark Twain Circle of America and the American Studies Association, as well as a founding editor of the Journal of Transnational American Studies. In addition to lecturing on Mark Twain across the world, her research on Twain has been featured twice on the front page of The New York Times. She also is the recipient of the John S. Tuckey Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mark Twain Studies by the Center for Mark Twain Studies.

Professor Fishkin’s Recommended Reading:

The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on his Life and Work – ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture, Shelley Fisher Fishkin

The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), Following the Equator (1897), The Diaries of Adam and Eve (1904, 1906)

– all reprinted in The Oxford Mark Twain, ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin

A former Washington Post and Associated Press journalist, Chris Daly has been teaching courses in the history and techniques of journalism at Boston University for almost 25 years, He is the author of Covering America: A Narrative History of the Nation’s Journalism, as well as many scholarly and popular articles on the history of news. Professor Daly has appeared as an expert in the PBS American Masters documentary “Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People.” He writes at www.journalismprofessor.com and contributes to the Washington Post series “Made by History.”

Professor Daly’s Recommended Reading

Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism, by Christopher B. Daly

The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism, eds. Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda

A History of The Black Press, by Armistead Pride and Clint C. Wilson II

The Powers that Be, by David Halberstam

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power, by James McGrath Morris

The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, by David Nasaw

https://journalismprofessor.com/

Lori Nisson is a Licensed Clinical Social worker and is the Family & Community Services Director at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and Banner Sun Health Research Institute. She has spent more than twenty years specializing in leadership and clinical positions, serving the needs of patients and families coping with emotional, cognitive, and behavioral problems. Lori is a distinguished speaker who provides training and education to professionals, patients and caregivers on topics relating to memory changes, movement disorders and behavioral health issues. Ms. Nisson serves as Adjunct Faculty Member at Arizona State University Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and serves on the Arizona Dementia Caregiver Alliance as well as the End of Life Care Partnership. Ms. Nisson was awarded a 2018 Practice Change Leader in Aging & Health Fellowship.

Outreach Senior Manager
Family Community Services
Banner Alzheimer’s Institute

Heather Mulder is the Outreach Senior Manager for Banner Alzheimer’s Institute. Working with older adults, and specifically, persons impacted by Alzheimer’s disease has been the common thread in Heather’s career, first in long term care, next with an Area Agency on Aging and finally as an educator for the Alzheimer’s Association- Illinois Chapter. Heather was selected to be part of the 2016/17 cohort of Arizona’s top emerging nonprofit leaders for a year-long leadership development program through the American Express Leadership Academy. Heather is known as a connector and shares her talent with BAI helping to create accessible programming for both persons with dementia and their care partners.

Research Scientist

Dr. Pablo Sobron is a St. Louis-based research scientist and founder of a 5-year-old startup, Impossible Sensing. A native of Spain, he received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Valladolid, Spain, in 2008. He then came to St. Louis to study at Washington University and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, which he completed in 2011. Dr. Sobron previously worked as a research scientist at the SETI Institute and NASA but decided to set off on his own: “I found I do more, and do it faster, flying solo.”

Pablo’s passion lies in robotic space exploration and comparative analog science—the study of places on Earth with comparable environments on other planets and moons. To date, Pablo has led or collaborated in over twenty projects focused on developing instruments and data processing tools for missions to explore the Solar System and fundamental research. Projects are sponsored by the European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, and NASA, among others.

Over the past ten years, Pablo logged 2,000+ fieldwork hours across the globe, including work in Arctic and desert environments, where he tests and performs scientific investigations with multiple prototypes of planetary exploration instruments.

The Impossible Sensing team of scientists’ current mission is to decipher and interpret the data gathered by Perseverance’s sensors. However, Impossible Sensing was founded with a much bigger goal: to build better sensors for future missions. Its latest prototype is called “Merlin,” and the company boasts it can give organizations like NASA “the capability to see what they could not see before, both here on Earth and in landscapes of other worlds.”

While space-related topics constitute a significant focus of Pablo’s research, many of his scientific publications contribute to our fundamental understanding of spectroscopic technologies. He believes this technology is essential to understand geochemical and mineralogical processes on Earth better and is core for the development of instruments and concepts for in-situ planetary exploration. Dr. Sobron is committed to the successful transfer of space-related technology into industrial applications that, in turn, advance the science and technology readiness of future planetary instruments.

Diane Rehm is a native Washingtonian who began her radio career in 1973 as a volunteer for WAMU 88.5, the NPR member station in Washington, D.C. She was hired as an assistant producer and later became the host and producer of two health-oriented programs.

In 1979, she began hosting WAMU’s local morning talk show, Kaleidoscope, which was renamed The Diane Rehm Show in 1984. , The Diane Rehm Show grew from a local program to one with international reach and a weekly on-air audience of more than 2.8 million.

Diane now brings her unique mix of curiosity, honesty, intimacy and nearly 40 years as host of WAMU and NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show to the podcast world. Listen weekly to On My Mind for Diane’s conversations with newsmakers, writers, artists and thinkers on the issues she cares about most: what’s going on in Washington, ideas that inform, and the latest on living well as we live longer. You can hear the podcast through her website www.dianerehm.org or iTunes.

You can also listen to archived interviews from The Diane Rehm Show (on air from 2001-2016) at https://dianerehm.org/shows. Topics range from the U.S. economy and foreign affairs to literature, science and the arts. Many of the nation’s prominent newsmakers, journalists, and authors have appeared on her program, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former secretaries of State Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.

In 2014, President Barack Obama presented Rehm with the National Humanities Medal. “In probing interviews with everyone from pundits to poets to Presidents, Ms. Rehm’s keen insights and boundless curiosity have deepened our understanding of our culture and ourselves,” the White House said.

Newsweek magazine named The Diane Rehm Show one of the most interesting talk shows in the country. National Journal says Rehm is “the class act of the talk radio world.” In fall 2013, the program was identified as one of the most powerful programs in public radio based on its ability to draw listeners to public radio stations.

In 2010, Diane Rehm won a Personal Peabody Award, considered among the most prestigious and selective prizes in electronic media, for her more than 30 years in public broadcasting. Rehm has been also named “Washingtonian of the Year,” and one of the “150 Most Influential People in Washington” by Washingtonian magazine. She’s been included several times on the magazine’s list of the “100 Most Powerful Women,” most recently in 2013. The daughter of Arab immigrants who settled in Washington in the early 20th century, Rehm was selected as Arab American of the Year by ACCESS in 2013 in celebration of her rich heritage.

Rehm has received many other honors and awards in her three-decade career, including: the inaugural Urbino (Italy) Press Award; the International Matrix Award from the Association for Women in Communications; and named a Fellow by the Society of Professional Journalists, the highest honor the society bestows on a journalist, for extraordinary contributions to the profession. In 2011, she received the Excellence in Journalism Award from the American News Women’s Club.

In 1998, Rehm’s career nearly ended because of spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological voice disorder that causes strained, difficult speech. Rehm sought treatment, returned to the show, and called attention to the condition. The National Council on Communicative Disorders recognized her work with a Communication Award, and ABC’s Nightline devoted an entire program to a conversation with Rehm about her disorder. In 2011, Rehm was awarded the Voice Education Research Awareness (VERA) Award from The Voice Foundation for her sustained contributions to the field of voice communication.

Rehm is the author of four best-selling autobiographical books: Finding My Voice (Knopf, 1999), in which she describes her childhood, marriage, career and voice disorder; Toward Commitment: A Dialogue about Marriage (Knopf, 2002), a deeply personal book co-authored with her husband, John; Life with Maxie (Gibbs Smith, 2010), a lighthearted story about her dog; and her most recent book, On My Own (Knopf, 2016), a moving story about the death of her husband of over 54 years and her struggle to reconstruct her life without him.

Rehm’s loyal connection to WAMU 88.5 and American University was recognized in 2007 when she was invited to receive an honorary degree and deliver the College of Arts and Sciences commencement speech. “I feel fortunate to have spent so many years in public broadcasting under the aegis of this fine University,” she told the graduates. “Our goals have been one and the same: to expand horizons, and to promote a deeper understanding of the world around us.” She has also been awarded honorary degrees from Virginia Theological Seminary, Washington College, McDaniel College, and Shepherd University.

Rehm is a director emerita of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and a trustee emerita of McDaniel College in Westminster, Md.

Diane Rehm lives in Washington D.C. She was married to her beloved late husband, John Rehm, for 54 years. In 2017, she married John Hagedorn, a retired Lutheran Minister. She has two children and two grandchildren.

Book and Documentary Intro

Spurred on by the death of her husband, the Peabody-award-winning journalist crosses the country to take an in-depth look at medical aid in dying. She speaks to people on all sides of the issue, uncovering the pros and cons, the facts and the misinformation surrounding this controversial practice that is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. The result is both moving and informative – an eye-opening documentary that is sure to provoke strong reactions and thoughtful conversations among viewers of all ages and backgrounds.

When My Time Comes: Interview with Diane Rehm on her Book and Upcoming Documentary

Join Peabody-award-winning journalist and NPR radio talk show host, Diane Rehm as she is interviewed by Oasis about her book, and upcoming documentary When My Time Comes: Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End. Diane became a champion of the growing right-to-die movement after her first husband, ravaged by Parkinson’s disease, begged doctors in vain for help ending his life. In a series of interviews in her book, Diane discusses the pros and cons with people who have seen the effects at close range: patients, relatives, physicians, clergy, hospice administrators, and others. The documentary, premiering on PBS April 13, 2021, follows Rehm across the country to take an in-depth look at medical aid in dying. She speaks to people on all sides of the issue, uncovering the pros and cons, the facts and the misinformation surrounding this controversial practice that is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. The result is both moving and informative – an eye-opening documentary that is sure to provoke strong reactions and thoughtful conversations among viewers of all ages and backgrounds. A Q&A session will follow the presentation.

Learn more here: https://whenmytimecomesmovie.com/

Photo courtesy of www.theoutwordsarchive.org.
Photo by bobrosetxaol

Phyllis is an Eagle Scout, a former member of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, a US Army veteran, a licensed engineer, a licensed attorney, a part-time municipal judge, a father, a grandmother, and a lesbian wife. Now having lived over sixty percent of her life as the woman she always felt herself to be, Phyllis remains on the cutting edge of LGBTQ and especially transgender legal and political issues.

In 2010 Phyllis was sworn-in as the first out transgender judge in the nation, as a City of Houston Associate Municipal Judge: she requested the part-time, associate judge status to allow her to retain her senior partnership of Frye, Steidley, Oaks and Benavidez, PLLC, which is an out LGBTQ-and-straight-allies law firm.

Publications

New York Times – Once a Pariah, Now a Judge: The Early Transgender Journey of Phyllis Frye

Outwards

Across the Generations: Perspectives of Transgender and Non-Binary Professionals

Wednesday, April 28
2:30 – 4:00 p.m. CT *all times are listed in central time
$10.00

Angela Kade Goepferd, MD, is the Chief Education Officer for Children’s Minnesota, Chief of Staff, pediatrician in the Children’s Minneapolis Primary Care clinic and medical director of Children’s Gender Health Program. Dr. Goepferd has been with Children’s for 15 years, and in that time has been an advocate for advancing equitable healthcare for all children, helped to create and cultivate The Children’s Way values to ensure a positive experience for patients, families and professional staff, and has been an engaged member and leader on several committees, strategic planning teams and other initiatives across the organization.

Dr. Goepferd has a passion for working with underserved and at-risk kids and families, speaks Spanish and cares for a diverse community of patients in her primary care clinic. In addition to running the academic education and health professional education programs for Children’s, she serves as the Chief of the Professional Staff. She is a leader in the LGBTQ community who is driving equitable care for LGBTQ youth, particularly transgender and gender diverse youth, and she is a sought after speaker and trainer on these topics. She was a member of the LGBT Standards of Care Advisory board, developing the first healthcare standards for LGBT people in the state of Minnesota, a recipient of one of the inaugural Business of Pride awards from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal in 2018 and winner of a special recognition award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2019 for her advocacy and education about caring for LGBTQ youth. In October of 2020, her first TED talk, “The revolutionary truth about kids and gender identity” was released by TEDxMinneapolis.

Publications

I Am

MSP – Transphobia is Hazardous to Your Health

Across the Generations: Perspectives of Transgender and Non-Binary Professionals

Wednesday, April 28
2:30 – 4:00 p.m. CT *all times are listed in central time
$10.00