Mental Health: From Illness to Wellness

Writer, activist, attorney, professor, and award-winning author, Melody Moezzi will share her deeply personal experiences of both struggling and thriving with a mental health condition (in her case, bipolar disorder, type I)—all as part of a concerted effort to combat the stigma and discrimination surrounding such conditions. Drawing on her unique perspective, she will discuss the importance of inclusion and intersectionality within and beyond our schools, and the roles of advocacy, self-care, and trauma-informed approaches in avoiding primary and secondary trauma, as well as compassion fatigue, for those of us in education and caretaking professions. Melody is the author of Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life and War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims, as well as her newest book, The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life. She has also appeared as a commentator on many radio and television programs, including NPR, CNN, BBC, PBS, and others.

Professional Burnout

Burnout is like a wildfire—spreading quickly and affecting everything in its path. With the increased stress, pressure, and expectations to do more with less, professional burnout is at an all time high. With 79% of the workforce burned out, it’s the perfect time to extinguish this epidemic. In this powerful presentation, Jessica gets you fired up by sharing key strategies to prevent and extinguish burnout, pinpointing your contributing factors to burnout and showing you how to handle stress to improve focus, performance, and team dynamic.

Jessica’s mission is simple: Transform Lives. As the top mind wellness expert, Jessica Rector, MBA is the authority on tackling your inner game and turning it into outer success and positive action!