Focus 2018: Workshop Session IV Presenters

The Baggage of Leadership: What Gets in the Way of Good Listening? (OD)  
Presenter: Linda Rutherford, Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer, Southwest Airlines

Linda Rutherford is Senior Vice President, Chief Communications Officer for Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, the nation’s largest airline in terms of domestic Customer boardings. Responsibilities include overseeing media relations, special event planning, crisis communications, emergency response and business continuity planning, community relations and charitable giving, corporate community affairs, public relations, social business, multimedia and visual communication, legislative communication/grassroots activities, Southwest’s Speaker’s Bureau, and employee communications. Prior to joining Southwest Airlines in 1992, she was a journalist in the Dallas area, including working for the Dallas Times Herald, and she began her career with Newsweek magazine in New York.

Tools to Overcome Adversity and Build Resilience (TC)
Presenter: Dixie Zittlow, Director of Outreach and Master Trainer, Dibble Institute

Dixie Zittlow, Director of Outreach and Master Trainer for The Dibble Institute is an experienced educator of 25 years, teaching history and literature in classical education institutions for 14 years. Zittlow is trained and certified in numerous healthy relationship curricula, and she has worked with at risk teens, providing healthy relationship education for the last ten years. Before working for The Dibble Institute, she was a federal grant manager for four years where she established and trained facilitators in healthy relationship programs in Wisconsin.

Her speaking engagements address topics of domestic and dating violence, the way to forgiveness, learning to ask for what you want, and excavating your true self. Zittlow was also a CASA (court appointed special advocate) volunteer advocating for neglected or abused children in the Wisconsin courts.

Last but not least, Zittlow is humbled by the education she received from her six children and six grandchildren and she delights in being a part of their lives.

Youth Voice! Youth with Lived Experience: Improving Policy and Practice (YE)
Presenter: Yorri Berry-Harris, Director of Youth Engagement, National Network for Youth

Yorri Berry-Harris serves as the Director of Youth Engagement at the National Network for Youth (NN4Y) in Washington, DC. At NN4Y, she oversees the National Youth Advisory Council with more than 20 members who educate policymakers, service providers, and community officials throughout the country about youth and young adult homelessness in America. The program trains formerly homeless young leaders to define a policy agenda and to partner with and educate organizational leaders and the general public to effect positive and productive changes to existing structures and policies. She has a decade of combined youth development, project management, youth development, program design, and organizational oversight experience in both the private and public sectors.

Working within the School System (SP)
Presenter: Tami Wilder, Co-CEO, Positive Impact International

Tami Wilder was born and raised in London, England, and has always had a love and passion for children and the arts.  She has taught dance and music for children for the past 15 years, beginning at age 14 when she started her own dance school for children. Wilder has lead youth ministries in her church and worked with various children shelters and therapeutic foster care agencies training foster parents and providing crisis intervention trainings.

Wilder is Co-CEO of Positive Impact International, a non-profit organization that provides free social services and extra curriculum activities to the “underserved” and “at risk” children in her Atlanta area community. She welcomed the opportunity to serve more children by joining the Safe Place team and dedicates much of her time training and educating over 100,000 students in over 125 schools about the Safe Place program all over Gwinnett County. Last year, Tami was voted Top Three Youngest Entrepreneurs in her county.

Making the Most of Your Partnership with NSPN (PD)
Presenters: Patricia Cardoso, COO, Haven House Services; Christina Jackson, Executive Director, Sea Haven, Inc.; Sydney Gambill, Advancement Coordinator, Immerse Arkansas; and Raymond Primes III, Assistant Director of West Tennessee Group Homes, Youth Villages

Patricia Cardoso LPC, is the Chief Operating Officer for Haven House Services in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her experience spans 23 years of both clinical and administrative work with youth and families in the South Florida area and, over the past 11 years, in North Carolina. Patricia attended the University of Miami, where she earned a Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. She also earned a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Sydney Gambill is a Licensed Master Social Worker in Little Rock, Arkansas.  She has served as the Advancement Coordinator at Immerse Arkansas for the past two years with a focus on grant writing, program evaluation, data management, and donor relations.  She has a passion for runaway and homeless youth and counts it as a deep privilege to work on behalf of them each day.  Outside of work, she embraces self-care through hiking, being a "regular" at a variety of coffee shops, and adventuring with her dog Indy.

Christina Jackson serves as the Executive Director of Sea Haven, Inc., a non-profit organization offering crisis stabilization and opportunities for homeless forgotten youth in Horry County and South Carolina.  Jackson is a community leader with over 25 years of experience in capacity building and organizational resiliency, executive leadership, strategic organizational and fund development, and event planning. She serves as an Executive Officer for the Total Care Homeless Coalition Board of Directors and as a board member on the Advisory Board for Horry Georgetown Technical College for the Criminal Justice/Human Services Department.  In 2015, Jackson won the Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership by Francis Marion University’s Nonprofit Leadership Institute and the South Carolina Association of Nonprofit Organizations (now Together SC). She earned her Bachelor of Science-Psychology/Sociology from the University of South Carolina.

Raymond Primes III, MBA, has served as assistant director of West Tennessee Group Homes, which includes the Poplar Group Home, since 2014. He began his career with Youth Villages in 2004, joining the organization as an overnight teacher counselor. He was later promoted to supervisor and program manager in different residential settings, including the Poplar Group Home and Runaway and Homeless Shelter and community relations manager in community-based programs, before being promoted to his current position. He has been affiliated with the runaway and homeless shelter in some capacity since 2006. He now serves on the advisory board of National Safe Place Network.