The Conference Producers
MOTHER WIT CONFERENCE "VISIONARY AND PRODUCER"
Shawnee Benton Gibson, LMSW / FDLC, is the Co-Founder and CoPresident of Spirit of A Woman (S.O.W.) Leadership Development Institute an organization established in 2002 and designed to educate, elevate and effect positive and sustainable transformation in the lives of individuals, groups, families and communities. She is also the Founder & CEO of The Griots' Healing Circle, a boutique consulting firm offering innovative coaching, counseling, workshop and training experiences to individuals, groups and organizations seeking to expand their power, purpose and impact in the world. Ms. Benton-Gibson is a graduate of New York University’s Silver School of Social work and is a licensed practitioner with over 23 years of professional experience in the areas of substance abuse prevention, treatment and recovery, adolescent development, individual, family and group counseling, women’s reproductive health, grief loss and bereavement and trauma.
Ms. Benton-Gibson has devoted her life to supporting individuals, families and groups with elevating the outcomes in their personal and professional lives and utilizes her professional training as well as her spiritual and artistic abilities to provide holistic and nourishing healing experiences to the persons that she is charged to serve and support. In addition to her clinical training, Ms. Benton-Gibson has utilized her spiritual and artistic gifts and abilities to provide holistic and nourishing healing experiences for the community. Shawnee is a master teacher, healer, vision coach, performance artist, inspirational speaker, mother and friend. Her principle teaching and healing tools consist of spiritual counseling, coaching, writing, sacred rituals, psychodrama, sociometry, energy work, the performing arts and storytelling as mediums to ignite transformation and initiate catharsis. Some of her credits include: “The Red Thread Movement”, “Mother Wit: Echoes From The Womb”, “The Mother Wit Conference”, “The Rooftop Visionary Group” and the “Be The Tree Rites of Passage Collective for Women” and “The Walk In the Light With Me 21-Day Ritual”. Shawnee is also an author of a book on healing and transformation entitled, "Walk In The Light With Me"; an autobiographical piece offering tools to those seeking to overcome the shadows of life to activate their purpose on the planet. According to Shawnee, healing work is "a labor of love and liberation".
CONFERENCE CO-PRODUCER
(Red Tent Visionary & Womb Museum Curator)
Kinyofu Mteremeshi-Mlimwengu is a long recognized professional in advocacy for Women’s Empowerment. She provides educational forums to support women's development, understanding and appreciation for their bodies as it relates to their womb and it's lifetime of stories. She is the proud mother of two young adults (whom she credits with inspiring her desire for further enlightenment), and a new grandmother.
More info about Kinyofu's mission and Red Tent women's circles can be found at
www.reproductiveawakening.com or facebook.com/reproductiveawakening
EVENT COORDINATOR & PRODUCER
Ashley Straw, RYT, is an intuitive healer and a Certified Yoga Teacher. She is the founder of OMM: On My Mind, an initiative which advocates for the accessibility and explores the efficacy of holistic alternatives to Western Medicine in long-term Mental Health treatment. OMM is currently generating a full-length documentary on some of the most "unique" and "obscure" healing modalities that exist on the planet. She has studied Yoga for eleven years in the Iyengar and Integral Yoga traditions; as well as Hinduism, Philosophy & Theatre Arts at Stony Brook University. Singing is her first passion, skill and is intimately related to the Healing work she performs regularly, as it all ultimately comes to harmonizing vibrations. She is a thoroughly trained performance artist, graduate of The American Musical & Dramatic Academy and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Contemporary Drama Program, who utilizes both Music and Theatre, practically, to inform her intuitive healing work. She is a Head Coach in the Be the Tree Rites of Passage Program with Spirit of a Woman Leadership Development Institute and participated in the Dramatic Presentations at both the First and Third Annual Motherwit Conferences. She is the owner and founder of the Flow and Restore Collective of Conscious Business Operations Specialists and Practitioners. Visit us online at flowandrestore.com.
A Few of the Former Conference Presenters
SPEAKERS & PANELISTS
Candace Thompson, a Trinidad and Tobago native, is a dancer, choreographer, certified fitness professional and cultural producer. She is the beauty and brains behindCanDanceFit, Artistic Director of ContempoCaribe and Founding Executive Director of Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE. Her dance training is extensive, beginning in Trinidad and Tobago, where she received instruction in modern dance and ballet, at La Danse Caraibe under Heather Henderson-Gordon. She is a graduate of Adelphi University's BFA in Dance with the Ruth St. Denis Award for excellence from the dance department, and has gone on to work in various dance styles including Afro- Caribbean, Classical Modern, Modern/Contemporary, Contemporary Floor Technique, Jazz, Soca and West African. CanDanceFit, a personal training, corrective exercise and movement instruction entity, serves clients and studios in Manhattan and Brooklyn, conveniently bringing holistic fitness, exercise, dance and movement programs to fitness enthusiasts short on time, but big on quality and to studios delivering high quality training. Currently, Candace does in-home training for clients in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and teaches Soca at Mark Morris Dance Center.
Dr. Adwoa Akhu is a New York State–licensed clinical psychologist. She has broad experience in the areas of trauma, depression, anxiety, stress management, spirituality, relationships and intimate partner abuse and is Board Certified in African-Centered/Black psychology. Dr. Akhu is a former president of the New York Association of Black Psychologists and a former board member of the Association of Black Psychologists. She provides consultation, workshops and professional training on a wide variety of psychological issues. Dr. Akhu is the author of numerous self-help books. For more information, and to receive your FREE resources visit DrAkhu.com
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Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH currently serves as a Deputy Commissioner in the New York City Department of Health and is the Founding Director of the Center for Health Equity. The Center’s mission is to bring an explicit focus to health equity in all of the Department’s work by tackling structural barriers, such as racism, ensuring meaningful community engagement, and fostering interagency coordination in neighborhoods with the highest disease burden. Prior to this role, she was an Assistant Commissioner in the NYC Health Department and served as the Director of the Brooklyn Office, a place-based approach. Dr. Maybank also successfully launched the Office of Minority Health as its Founding Director in the Suffolk County Department of Health Services in NY from 2006-2009.
Dr. Maybank serves as Vice President of the Empire State Medical Association, the NYS affiliate of the National Medical Association. In the media and on the lecture circuit, she has appeared or been profiled on Disney Jr.’s highly successful Doc McStuffins Animated Series, ESSENCE Facebook live and their Festival’s Empowerment Stage, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry show, and various other outlets. She has also advised on the award-winning documentary Soul Food Junkies by Byron Hurt and Black Women in Medicine by Crystal Emery. For her accomplishments, she has won numerous awards.
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Dr. Maybank holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, a MD from Temple University School of Medicine, and a MPH from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. A pediatrician board certified in Preventive Medicine/Public Health, she completed her preventive medicine residency at the SUNY Stony Brook University School of Medicine and her pediatrics residency at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine’s Schneider Children’s Hospital.
Founder and Servant Leader of “Ade Insights Ministries”, served as the Assistant Pastor of the St.Paul Community Baptist Church from Oct 16, 2016 to January 31, 2018. This coming after a 20 yr journey as a licensed minister, a 15yr journey as a consecrated Elder, and a 10 journey as an ordained clergyman. The process of this man of God has not been without major sacrifices, struggle, questioning, grappling with the call on his life and within himself. Choosing to leave a very secure career as a NYC Correction Officer to answer his call into ministry, after serving 12 1/2 yrs in the Department of Corrections, was a serious turning point in his life of faith. Scared, but open. Uncertain, but trusting. Insecure, but willing. Ridiculed, but ready. Untested, but rightly positioned. So many opportunities before him, and so much security left behind. He welcomed the challenge of faith.
βAlong the journey mistakes were made, goals were accomplished, people were blessed and his life was being transformed all along the way. The lessons that were and that are still being learned has informed and shaped his theology and spiritual formation. The lessons have translated into sermons, teaching sessions, insightful counseling, and a profound assessments of life and ministry that's led him beyond the walls of a building and into the hearts of Gods people found in prisons, schools, funeral homes, home gatherings, etc. Rev Shannon shares with unapologetic transparency and lives from a place of intimacy with God, that shows up as "into me see" (this is Rev. Shannon's own definition of intimacy) he believes that God always sees him fully and completely, and loves him unconditionally. Therefore why spend your life hiding who you are in God, from the people you've been called to serve. His motto is; "Faithfulness to God, willingness to grow through struggle and walking in humility eventuates to elevation in Ministry and life.This is his story and his song.
His favorite passage of scripture is Ecc. 7:15-18 and this passage simply suggest to him; "Balance is key in ones spiritual quest"
Rev. Shannon is a spiritual life coach, Certified Grief Recovery Specialist and Licensed/ordained Minister.
Paige Bellenbaum, LMSW started her social work career working at a homeless shelter in San Francisco, where she created a housing and aftercare program for families transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing. She then moved to New York City in 2000 to get her Masters of Social Work at Columbia University. After she graduated, she worked for an organization called the Center for Family Life located in Sunset Park Brooklyn as a Community Developer, then moved on to Habitat for Humanity – New York City for 6 years as the Director of Advocacy and Community Outreach.
While at Habitat, she had her first child – Max. After Max was born, Paige suffered from severe postpartum depression and anxiety. Once she began to recover, she became committed to fighting for education, screening and treatment for postpartum depression so that women would not have to suffer silently. She drafted legislation in New York State that was championed by State Senator Liz Krueger, mandating education and strongly encouraging screening of all new and expecting mothers that was signed into law in 2014.
In 2016, Paige left her 6 year post as Director of Community Programs at Settlement Housing Fund where she oversaw a portfolio of programs ranging from a homeless shelter for families, transitional housing, a state of the art computer lab, and an alternative to incarceration program for young adults. She joined forces with Reproductive Psychiatrist, Dr. Catherine Birndorf, to open The Motherhood Center of New York.
The Motherhood Center is the first of its kind program in New York that provides treatment and support to pregnant and postpartum women suffering from perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), otherwise referred to as postpartum depression. PMADs include perinatal depression, GAD, PTSD, OCD, Bipolar and Psychosis. We provide multiple levels of care for women depending on the acuity of their symptoms including a day program, outpatient therapy, medication management, and support groups. The Day Program is a unique intermediate level of care for up to 16 women that are having a very difficult time caring for themselves and/or their baby. We have an on-site nursery, and moms are with us 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. During the day, new and expecting moms participate in therapeutic support groups with a focus on CBT, IPT, DBT and Dyadic Therapy, as well as expressive therapies including yoga, mindfulness, medication, and art therapy. Every patient is followed by an individual therapist and reproductive psychiatrist, and family/couples therapy is a standard component of care.
The Motherhood Center also offers outpatient therapy and medication management to pregnant and postpartum women who are experiencing more moderate PMAD symptoms, as well as PMAD support groups during the day and evening.
