Making Connections: Part 2 of 3
This is a digital event. You should receive information in your ticket or from the host about how to join online.
- Add to Calendar:
- Google |
- iCal (ics)
In this session of the Making Connections series, innovators share how their groundbreaking work -- bringing people together across generations -- reduces loneliness and social isolation.
After the first hour of discussion, we invite everyone into peer-led breakout sessions for shared reflection through guided prompts.
In a time of disorientation, division, and social distrust, we need new ideas to get connected to one another. The Making Connections series, hosted by Allison Gilbert and Reimagine, directly advances the urgent call to action from the 19th and 21st U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in his Parting Prescription for America: the need to strengthen relationships is the most pressing challenge of our time.
Past recordings from Making Connections are available here.
Speakers
Dana Griffin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Eldera.ai, transforming increased human longevity from a healthcare crisis into a global opportunity. Eldera, meaning the Era of the Elders, leverages AI to unlock the wisdom and scale of the older generation as a new resource to benefit society with multiple critical applications. The platform connects vetted older adults with young people and with each other for mentorship and support, addressing both the mental health crises among the youth and loneliness epidemic of older adults. Eldera has been recognized as a Social Prescription by The Cleveland Clinic and as a Case Study for “Using AI to Reconnect Generations” by the UN's AI for Good. It has also been featured by MSNBC, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and CNN named Eldera as one of their 2023 Good News of the Year.
Dana was raised by her grandparents in Transylvania, Romania and has been guided by elder mentors throughout her life. A former AdAge “40 under 40” executive, Dana became an age-tech entrepreneur and AI for Good advocate following the death of her closest elder mentor, Linda. She now serves on the board of BrightFocus Foundation and as a member of AI Commons, and has been advising and speaking internationally about healthy longevity and principled uses of AI for social impact.
Dana’s work has been showcased by Columbia University, Harvard Business School, and Stanford Center for Aging, and quoted in best-selling books on healthy aging. Outside of her professional life, Dana speaks six languages, enjoys reading utopian Sci-Fi, Vedic meditation, and exploring diverse wisdom traditions and cultures.
Dr. S. Renee Mitchell, an educator, artist, book author, entrepreneur, poet and performer is a nationally award-winning expert on culturally relevant social-emotional learning (SEL); and is the visionary founder of a transformative, youth leadership-development initiative called: I Am M.O.R.E. (Making Ourselves Resilient Everyday). After 25 years as a nationally award-winning newspaper journalist, where she was nominated twice for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, Dr. Renee has authored several plays, a children’s book about bullying, and a novel about surviving domestic violence and sexual assault. Renee's latest written masterpiece, which she recently completed, is titled “Trauma-Ties: How a Life Perforated with Pain Poetically Led Me To My Purpose.” Her most recent book honors the legacy of her father, a widely regarded social justice advocate and a California-based operative of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Renee’s latest book also processes how growing up in a household of eight children and yet never feeling loved, seen, or cared for after her father’s death, shaped her into the person she has become: A champion of joy, an advocate for youth and the visionary founder of The Soul Restoration Center, a unique cultural and healing-focused gathering. An internationally traveled speaker, Dr. Renee’s unique voice and poetic writing style reminds one of Maya Angelou. Her face and her magnetic energy resembles Oprah; and her pronounced gap, and revolutionary passion for social justice is evocative of Angela Davis. Yet in Portland, Renee has earned her own monikers Visionary HeARTivist and a Creative Revolutionist.
https://www.iammoreresilient.com/
Host
Allison Gilbert is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and one of the most influential writers and speakers on how to find the inner resources to overcome life’s biggest challenges. Through research and lived experience, Allison helps audiences transform grief and loss and find connection amid the growing public health crisis of social isolation and loneliness. She is co-author of Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s final book, The Joy of Connections: 100 Ways to Beat Loneliness and Live a Happier and More Meaningful Life. The book stems from the article Allison wrote for The New York Times, “Dr. Ruth Saved People’s Sex Lives. Now she wants to Cure Loneliness,” about Dr. Ruth’s appointment as New York State’s Ambassador to Loneliness, the first such position in the United States.
In collaboration with Reimagine, Allison hosts a monthly conversation series on overcoming loneliness, “Making Connections,” and previously hosted “Passed and Present,” named after her beloved book, about death and maintaining family bonds. Featured guests have included U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Anna Quindlen, V, formerly Eve Ensler, Rachel Cargle, David Kessler, Tembi Locke, Jean Chatzky, and Dr. BJ Miller.
Allison has been interviewed on the Today show, Good Morning America, and NPR, given a speech in front of the President of Iceland, appeared on stage with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Soledad O’Brien, and presented hundreds of talks to audiences at Amazon, Google, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, and many other wellness retreat centers, companies, and organizations. She’s also enjoyed a fabulous dinner with Jay Shetty!
She serves on the Advisory Board of Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors and is a past Board Member of the National Alliance for Children’s Grief.
Allison lives in New York with her husband and two children.
