Speakers Bureau
Keynote Presentations
We offer nationally known and local speakers providing customized programs for trainers and the general public on: Marriage Preparation, Marriage Enhancement, Relationship and Communication Skills, Character Education, Abstinence Education, Growing Up Green and much more. Below is a sample of our keynote speakers for your consideration:
Loretta Graham Motivational speaker, poet and children’s book author
Mrs. Graham is the Director of Youth Leadership Development Programs for the Pennsylvania Family Coalition (www.pafamilies.org). She teaches leadership, communications skills, HIV/AIDS prevention and abstinence education to Philadelphia area schools and provides Teacher Training Workshops in Character Education and Relationship Intelligence Curriculum.
Loretta is a successful producer and host of a Pro-life radio program on WTMR, Camden/Philadelphia. The program brought to light issues relevant within the Black community, which focused on strengthening marriage, family and community. She is a certified trainer in the Free Teens Leadership Training and Discover the Real Me Character Education curricula.
Mrs. Graham holds a degree in Communications and English from St. Joseph’s University, in Philadelphia. Donald and Loretta Graham have been married for thirty-six years. They have six children and six grandchildren.
Julie Baumgardner, MS, CFLE
Executive director of First Things First (FTF), a grassroots organization dedicated to strengthening marriages and families in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The success of the model has sparked interest in duplicating it in cities across the country. Prior to joining FTF, she worked as a social worker, a program director for a child & adolescent program and as a marketing director. She serves on the board of community organizations and frequently speaks on family issues, including parenting, reducing out-of-wedlock childbearing and strengthening fatherhood and marriage relationships. Her weekly column in the Chattanooga Times-Free Press reaches thousands. She and her husband, Jay, have a daughter.
Gary Chapman, PhD
Director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants, Inc. He is author of 25 books, including the NY Times bestseller, The Five Love Languages, which has been translated in 35 languages with additional versions for men, children, teenagers, and singles. Other titles include The Five Languages of Apology, Desperate Marriages, and Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way. He leads marriage seminars nationally and internationally. His nationally-syndicated radio program, A Love Language Minute, airs daily on more than 100 stations. He and his wife Karolyn reside in Winston-Salem and have two children and two grandchildren.
Bill Doherty, PhD
Professor and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota, is past president of the National Council on Family Relations and author of 12 books, including Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart and Take Back Your Wedding: Managing the People Stress of Wedding Panning. He leads the federally funded Minnesota Family Formation Project which works with urban couples who are unmarried new parents. He is co-founder of the National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists, and co-founder (with daughter Elizabeth) of The First Dance, a premarital program on the family dynamics of wedding planning. He is developing a new reconciliation project for couples who have filed for divorce. He speaks across the country to both lay and academic audiences and appears frequently in the media. He and his wife, Leah, live in St. Paul and are the parents of two, and beaming grandparents of two.
John Gray, PhD
Lecturer, educator and author of 15 bestsellers including Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, the number one best-selling book of the last decade and his latest, Mars and Venus Collide: The New War Between the Sexes. In the last ten years, over 30 million Mars and Venus books have been sold in over 40 languages around the world. An expert in the fields of communication and relationships, Gray’s focus is to help men and women understand, respect and appreciate their differences. He has appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The View, Politically Incorrect, Larry King Live and others and has been profiled in USA Today, Time, TV Guide, People, New Age Journal, Forbes and other publications and is the premier Better Life relationship coach on AOL. He lives with his wife and three children in northern California.
Harville Hendrix, PhD and Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD
Partners in life and work, are authors of two new education programs: Couplehood As A Spiritual Path designed for faith based couples and Imago Connects designed for all couples. These programs are based on Imago Relationship Therapy, a therapy for couples which they co-created. They also co-founded Imago Relationships International, a non-profit organization that supports 2000+ therapists practicing in 30 countries. They lecture and train internationally and have authored and co-authored nine books on intimate relationships including the classic best sellers Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples; Keeping the Love You Find: A Personal Guide; and Giving the Love That Heals: A Guide for Parents. Getting the Love You Want is celebrating its 20th anniversary this years with a new foreword and extensive revisions. All together their books have been published in over 57 languages. They have appeared on many radio and television shows and been written about in many newspapers and magazines. Harville’s appearances include sixteen Oprah Winfrey Shows, one of which won Ms. Winfrey an Emmy and was included in her top 20 shows in her 20th anniversary celebration. Helen is sole author of Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance and has been inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame for her work in empowering women and girls which includes launching a billion dollar campaign called Women Moving Millions. They live in New Mexico and New York and have six children and four grandchildren.
Sue Johnson, Ed D
Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa in Canada and Research Professor in Marital and Family Therapy at Alliant University in California. She is the Director of the International Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy and the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute. Her best known professional books are, The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (2004) and Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with Trauma Survivors (2002). Her latest book, for the public, Hold me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love has just been released. Sue has received awards for her work from AAMFT and AFTA and is an invited fellow of APA. Professionally, she is either traveling the world talking about love and attachment and couple therapy, writing, seeing couples or conducting research on couple interventions. Personally, she loves being with her husband and kids, kayaking on Canadian lakes, and dancing tango.
Pat Love, Ed D
Co-founder of the Austin Family Institute is a former distinguished graduate professor, author, and master trainer who has contributed to marriage education through her books, articles, training programs, With daughter, Kathleen McFadden, she co-founded Love Education and the Certified Love Educator (CLE) training program. Her classics, Hot Monogamy and The Truth About Love have taken her around the world spreading the good news about marriage and commitment. In 2007, she and co-creator, Jon Carlson launched the comprehensive DVD Course, Love-What Everyone Needs to Know and with, co-author, Steven Stosny, introduced her latest book, How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It. She is a frequent media guest with multiple appearances on Oprah, Today, and CNN and is a regular contributor to magazines such as Tango, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, Glamour, and Woman’s World. She lives in Austin, Texas and is a mother and
grandmother.
Cloé Madanes
Author of five books that are classics in the field: Strategic Family Therapy; Behind the One Way Mirror; Sex, Love and Violence; The Secret Meaning of Money and The Violence of Men. She is also co-creator of The Ultimate Relationship Program - a series of films on strategic interventions. She has won numerous awards for her contribution to psychology. For many years she was the Director and Founder of The Family Therapy Institute of Washington, D.C. Currently she is the President of The Robbins-Madanes Center for Strategic Intervention in La Jolla, California. Cloé has been featured in Newsweek, Vogue, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and has appeared on Oprah. A volume of her selected papers was published in 2006.
Howard Markman, PhD
Professor of psychology and co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver and a practicing marital therapist and workshop leader. His groundbreaking longitudinal research on the prediction and prevention of relationship discord and divorce, funded for 25+ years by NIMH and NICHD, has produced over 125 journal articles, books and papers. With Scott Stanley, he developed the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), and more recently the Love Your Relationship Couples Retreats based on PREP. He is the leading marital researcher and marriage educator in the country and is an APA Fellow and recipient of the 2001 Distinguished Service Research Award from Smart Marriages. Markman & Stanley and colleagues have conducted state of the art marriage education evaluation studies of PREP including current ones involving religious organizations and the U.S. Army. He is co-author of the book 12 Hours to a Great Marriage, as well as the best-selling Fighting for Your Marriage. He appears regularly in the media (Oprah, Today, USA Today, etc.). His interests also include the science of prevention, the dissemination of empirically-based interventions to communities and social policy makers, the effects of relationship discord and divorce on mental illness, and the psychology of love.
David Olson, PhD
President, Life Innovations, and professor emeritus, Family Social Science, University of Minnesota. He is a Fellow and clinical member of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Association of Marital Therapy (AAMFT) and is past president of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) and the Upper Midwest Association of Marital and Family Therapists (UMAMFT). He has received several research and theory awards from a variety of organizations including ACME, APA, AAMFT, AFTA, ACA. He has developed over ten couple and family inventories including PREPARE, ENRICH, PAIR, AWARE, Family Strengths, Family Satisfaction and FACES (four versions). Over 50,000 counselors have been trained to
use PREPARE/ENRICH and over a million couples have taken the program. The Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems he developed has been used in over 1,000 studies of couples and families. He has written more than 100 articles and 20 books including the most recent: Empowering Couples: Building on Your Strengths, Marriage and Family: Intimacy, Diversity and Strengths, Building Relationships, and Families: What Makes Them Work.
His frequent media appearances include the Today Show, CBS Morning
Show, Good Morning America and Oprah.
Scott Stanley, PhD
Research professor at the University of Denver and co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies. He has published widely, with research interests including commitment, communication, sacrifice, the prevention of marital distress, and cohabitation. Along with Howard Markman and colleagues, he has been involved in the research, development, and refinement of the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) since 1977, with research funded by NIMH. The team is currently conducting a long-term study of PREP in the U. S. Army, funded by the NICHD. He heads up a team that is also conducting a large, nationally sampled, long-term study of the risks of various patterns of cohabitation and couple pathways into marriage, funded by NICHD. Stanley and colleagues have recently produced curricula for lower income participants (Within My Reach, for individuals, and Within Our Reach, for couples). Stanley is the author of The Power of Commitment, and co-author of Fighting for Your Marriage, A Lasting Promise, and 12 Hours to a Great Marriage. He lives in Denver with wife, Nancy, and two sons.
Dennis Stoica, MBA
President of the California Healthy Marriages Coalition, which through its CCF Intermediary Grant has pioneered the "coalition of coalitions" model for Healthy Marriage Initiatives on a statewide basis. Dennis also founded the Orange County Resource Center which has been one of the strongest community-based coalitions in the country. His Community Marriage Resource Center Website, an electronic clearinghouse of marriage-related programs and resources that acts as a catalyst in building community collaboration, is now being replicated throughout the country. Dennis also pioneered the Grantwriting Boot Camp, a Training and Technical Assistance intervention that has been phenomenally successful in helping numerous HM organizations develop winning grant applications. He received an MBA from Harvard and combines his business acumen and a "passion for Marriage" into a whirlwind of innovative activities that support Healthy Marriages both in California and beyond. He lives in Southern California with his wife, Sandy.
John Van Epp, PhD, is the founder and director of the Marriage LINKS and PICK a Partner programs, commonly referred to as How To Avoid Marrying A Jerk (ette). His book of the same title blends in-depth research with humorous stories to provide a map for making healthy relationship choices. Known for his humor and insight, he conducts numerous presentations and workshops, and has trained over five thousand instructors in his programs. His twenty+ years of clinical experience and research in premarital, marital and family relations, enriched by his previous experience as a minister and adjunct professor, have paved the way for his programs to be taught in thousands of churches, singles organizations, educational settings and social agencies in 45 states, ten countries and by more than 2,000 chaplains and family advocacy workers. He and his wife, Shirley, are the proud parents of two daughters.
Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW
Director of The Divorce Busting Center in Boulder, CO, where she and her clinical staff help clients strengthen marriages and prevent divorce using her solution-oriented, down-to-earth approach to marital problem-solving. Among the first in her field to courageously speak out against unnecessary divorce, Michele is passionate offering couples tools to make their marriages work and keep their families together in her lively seminars. She also teaches those in the front lines - therapists, clergy and lay people how to work with couples to stack the deck in the favor of marriage. Her Marriage Breakthrough and Keeping Love Alive programs are taught by marriage educators in church, military, community and professional settings worldwide. She is the author of seven books including her best-selling, Divorce Busting, The Divorce Remedy, The Sex-Starved Marriage and her latest, The Sex-Starved Wife (2008). Her work has been featured in nearly every major newspaper and magazine and she is a frequent guest on shows such as TODAY, 20/20, 48 Hours, CBS Morning Show, Oprah, O’Reilly Factor and CNN. She and her husband, Jim, are the parents of two children.
April 16th, 2008