Featuring Landon Donovan

January 31, 2024

SPEAK is honored to welcome Landon Donovan, former professional soccer player who is widely regarded as the greatest American soccer player of all time. As a student-athlete and young professional athlete, Donovan faced the pressures of competition and the expectations of others at the highest levels. He experienced anxiety, loneliness and, at times, depression while pursuing his greatest passion and career path in soccer. Donovan cares deeply about helping young athletes and students prioritize mental health while in pursuit of their extracurricular and academic goals. As we strive to help our children navigate highly competitive environments, Donovan‘s lived experience and lessons learned offer unique insight and guidance. His talk will inspire, educate, and give parents tools to help our children pursue their passions while preserving—and even strengthening—their mental well-being, resilience and sense of self.

Connect Don’t Correct - Learn healthy ways to parent children during times of conflict. SPEAK is excited to welcome Sheila Menezes and Lisa Rothman on November 1 at 7pm to share their expertise around the neuroscience of conflict, how our emotional response impacts our relationships and healthy ways to connect with our children during trying times.

Actions Matter: Combating Harassment in Our Community

A customized interactive virtual training session for parents and guardians to learn how to safely intervene when witnessing or experiencing harassment.

Please join us to hear Kelly speak about “Three Tales Of Parenthood”, a humorous yet insightful account of her personal journey of parenting children through elementary, high school and now college.

On Wednesday May 11, 2022, from 6:00-7:15pm, SPEAK is excited to host Learning for Justice educator Dr. Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn in conversation with local KPIX journalist and broadcaster Betty Yu. In the wake of the surge in reports of anti-Asian incidents in the Bay Area and nationally over the past two years, many parents, caregivers and educators are looking for language and tools to support our youth as they develop confidence in their identity and in their ability to be allies. Blackburn and Yu will share strategies to help our children navigate bullying, microaggressions and safety concerns based on scenarios from our own community.

Dr. Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn is an educator, speaker and professional learning facilitator.

Her work focuses on identity, diversity and justice with an emphasis on race and ethnicity. The author of an upcoming middle grade book, “The Truth About Chinese Americans: Exclusion and Belonging”, and the LinkedIn Learning course “Understanding and Supporting Asian Employees”, Sarah also serves as Associate Director, Learning in Schools at Learning for Justice, an organization dedicated to creating equitable school experiences for students and supporting educators. Founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) is dedicated to creating equitable school experiences for all students.

Betty Yu joined KPIX 5 in November 2013 as a general assignment reporter. She spent two years at WTVJ, the NBC-owned station in Miami, as a reporter before moving to San Francisco. Prior to that, she was an anchor and reporter for News 12 The Bronx and Brooklyn, a 24-hour cable news station, for four years. She covered New York City crime, politics, sports, and severe weather.

Please register here.

On March 22, 2022, from 7:00pm-8:15pm, SPEAK will host acclaimed psychologist, author, and speaker Dr. Kristin Neff as she explains how and why acts of self-compassion correlate with strength, resilience and motivation. Dr. Neff has authored the books: Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review, among others, and her TEDx talk has been viewed over 1.7 million times. To pre-order any of her books, specially signed for SPEAK audience members, please click here. Signed copies are limited to the first 100 books reserved on a first-come, first-served basis.

We hope you can join us - Register Here.

Ijeoma Oluo (ee-joh-mah oh-loo-oh) is a writer, speaker and internet yeller. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race and most recently, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. Her work on race has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many other publications. She was named to the 2021 TIME 100 Next list and has twice been named to the Root 100. She received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

SPEAK is excited to host Dr. John Medina -- author of the New York Times bestseller "Brain Rules" and the national bestseller "Brain Rules for Baby" on Wednesday, October 27, 2021 from 7pm-8pm. During his presentation, Dr. Medina will teach us about the basic science behind what forms our children's genetic predispositions ("nature”) and how we can contribute to our children's environment to help them to thrive ("nurture”).

*Note: This event will not be recorded.

Photo by Carl Bower