Kevin Gogin

Kevin Gogin, MFT
School Health Programs
Student Support Services Department
San Francisco Unified School District
                  
Kevin Gogin, has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 1989. He was hired in 2000 to develop the first comprehensive program addressing LGBT issues within a school setting: Support Services for LGBT Youth. Since its inception, he has worked on safe school planning, classroom intervention, and curriculum development and implementation. Most recently, he has collaborated with a team to create the first-ever school district sponsored website that addresses LGBT issues that includes curriculum, data, and school based activities.

Kevin is the Department Liaison with city agencies coordinating the High School Wellness Programs, which provide mental health and nursing services, and referrals at 15 high schools.

He also acts as the point person for Crisis Response for the District. In addition, he provides training on a variety of counseling and intervention strategies including classroom response for crises, drug and alcohol intervention, adolescent reproductive health, and lgbt risk factors and school interventions.

Kevin has spoken at a number of conferences regarding LGBT youth issues including the American Association of Suicidology, American School Health Association, and California Association of School Social Workers.

Ilsa Bertolini

Ilsa Bertolini, MA School Health Programs
Student Support Services Department
San Francisco Unified School District
Ilsa Bertolini works in the program Support Services for LGBTQ Youth in San Francisco Unified School District. She develops and reviews curriculum in alignment with the state framework related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning youth. Ilsa conducts professional development trainings to school site staff and administrators on meeting the needs of LGBTQ youth and families and responds to school safety concerns regarding LGBTQ youth and families. This includes working with administration to develop comprehensive plans to address homophobia and transphobia in schools.

Two exciting recent events include a middle school “Gay-Straight Alliance Day” where students convened to learn advocacy and presentation skills to bring back to their schools to address homophobia, as well as our inaugural Families Dinner, where over 200 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender parents, district staff and students gathered to meet each other, share a meal, and learn about district resources.

Ilsa is currently the Treasurer on the Board of Directors for Health Initiatives for Youth (HIFY), a Bay Area non-profit which improves the health and well-being of underserved young people. Ilsa has a Master's Degree in Human Sexuality Studies.

Rebecca Woodland

Rebecca Woodland, PhD
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Dr. Woodland is and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her scholarship is focused on the examination of organizational collaboration and evaluating and improving the quality of school-agency partnerships. She is former Assistant Professor and Director of Secondary Teacher Education at the University of Vermont (2001-2006) who has authored numerous publications related to the evaluation and improvement of educational programs. In 2005 Dr. Woodland received the Marcia Guttentag Award, presented by the American Evaluation Association for her outstanding contribution to the field of evaluation whose work brings to life the guiding principles of the profession.

Dr. Woodland has been the lead evaluator for many initiatives, including two large-scale Safe School/Healthy Student strategic alliances funded by the Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services, and a 21 Century Community Learning Centers demonstration grant. The Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services have recommended Dr. Woodland’s Strategic Alliance Formative Assessment process as the preferred model to use in the evaluation of community-wide collaborations.

Phyllida Burlingame

Phyllida Burlingame
American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California

Phyllida Burlingame is the Reproductive Justice Policy Director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Her publications include Sex Education in California Public Schools: Are Students Learning What They Need to Know? (ACLU of Northern California, 2003), a survey of sex education programs in over 150 school districts across the state, and Sex, Lies and Politics: Abstinence-Only Curricula in California Public Schools (Applied Research Center, 1997). She played an instrumental role in drafting and ensuring passage of the California Comprehensive Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention Education Act (SB 71, 2003) and the California Sexual Health Education Accountability Act (AB 629, 2007). The former requires sex education in California public schools to be medically accurate, comprehensive, and free of bias, while the latter extends these requirements to state-funded community-based sex education. Burlingame has collaborated with California state agencies to guide the implementation of these laws and also works with parents and community members, and with allied organizations throughout California, to ensure that local schools and agencies and comply with them. Burlingame also serves as a resource for sex education advocates in other states and nationally who look to the ACLU of Northern California’s work and California’s legislation as models. She is the steering committee chair of Bay Area Communities for Health Education. Ms. Burlingame is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College.

Milagros Garrido-Fishbein

Milagros Garrido-Fishbein, MS
Healthy Teen Network

Mila Garrido manages various projects to support the use of evidence-based approaches in the field of pregnant and parenting teens as well as preventing teen pregnancy, STI and HIV. Mila assists in the research, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of trainings, workshops and presentations.

Prior to joining Health Teen Network, Mila was an Outreach Specialist for Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine-Minority AIDS Initiative. She developed, organized, and presented educational programs, training seminars, and workshops for professionals, youth and adults, as well as developed new education materials and training curricula for HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention, and intervention initiatives. Ms. Garrido rendered technical assistance to area health providers to meet the needs of Latino populations for sexually transmitted diseases. She also supervised the Latino Medication Adherence Program and coordinated the access to continuity of medical care programs.

Vanessa Geffard

Vanessa Geffard, MPH
Healthy Teen Network

As a Technical Assistance Associate at Healthy Teen Network, Vanessa trains health care professionals and direct service providers to support the implementation of evidence-based interventions, as well as on the unique needs of young people.
Vanessa has many years of direct service experiences related to adolescent health, policy, and HIV. Her journey into the health and policy field started when she worked on the International Youth Leadership Council with Advocates for Youth, where she advocated and lobbied on behalf of adolescent reproductive health. While in graduate school to earn her MPH, Vanessa focused on health policy, specifically researching the positive impact of web-based interventions as they relate to decreasing the risk of HIV/AIDS among young women of color.

Vanessa has conducted trainings on youth-led policy making in Abuja, Nigeria for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her other training experience include helping college students design culturally aware inclusive activities on college campuses. Vanessa has also participated in the U.S. Sex Education Debate on Voice of American and conducted lobby day trainings for various stakeholders and health care providers in Maryland and Washington.

Vanessa has worked extensively with young people as a health educator, campus organizer, case manager, and researcher in the field and wants young people to feel empowered through proper knowledge and resources. Vanessa holds a B.S in Community Health from University of Maryland College Park and a MPH from Morgan State University.

Dave Reynolds

Dave Reynolds, MPH, CPH
Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Network
Dave Reynolds is a Pittsburgh native with a BA from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an MPH from Columbia University in New York. Dave is currently the Project Director for the Safe & Healthy LGBT Youth Project at Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Network. This project is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent and School Health and is exciting as it is the first time a safe schools initiative with this emphasis has been funded. Before joining GSA Network, Dave spent four years at The Trevor Project, initially as the East Coast Call Center Manager, then Advocacy and Education Manager and finally Sr. Public Policy and Research Manager—attending to the growing suicide prevention organization’s programs and priorities in a variety of areas. While at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) he helped construct the "HIV and AIDS @ 25" Media Resource Guide which was released in June 2006 to recognize 25 years of the pandemic. He also spent four months living in South Africa researching HIV and AIDS prevention education in public schools in townships. Dave’s graduate work at Columbia in the department of Sociomedical Sciences focused on education and program design as well as policy, research, and evaluation. During his undergraduate years Dave managed anti-gang and academic enrichment programs in under-served East Los Angeles high schools and joined a research team in graduate school to look at antiretroviral therapy adherence and how it relates to the communication styles of the prescribing physician. Dave prizes his strong background in research, public policy, public health and youth advocacy.

Debra Christopher

Debra Christopher
President, BolderLearning, LLC

Debra Christopher is the President of BolderLearning, LLC, where she leads an innovative consulting group who provide systems and strategies for strengthening personal and organizational capacity for sustainable change. The team works in partnership with clients on a wide variety of services—organizational development, program and strategic planning, meeting management, instructional design, trainer development, facilitation practices, training transfer and training evaluation. Debra also serves as a Professional Development Senior Manager for ETR Associates. In that role she is leading the conceptualization, expansion and management of projects related to ETR’s professional development services.

Through her expertise as a professional development specialist and education consultant, Debra has successfully provided training and technical assistance to hundreds of individuals and groups throughout the U.S and is recognized nationally as a highly skilled professional developer, change agent and advocate for continuous learning.