Healthcare can be challenging for anyone—but for older LGBTQ individuals, the barriers are often deeper and more complex. This engaging talk explores how thoughtful, inclusive communication can transform healthcare experiences, making every person feel truly seen, heard, and respected. Join us to learn how the words we choose and the ways we listen can foster trust, reduce disparities, and build a system that cares for everyone with dignity.

For decades, Washington state has invested in increasingly harsher punishments as the solution to public safety. This investment has devastated communities, particularly communities of color, and created a mass incarceration crisis in our state. Panelists will discuss restorative justice, violence prevention, sentencing reform, and how criminalization policies and tough-on-crime rhetoric during election seasons undermine public safety. This discussion will examine the impact our sprawling criminal legal system has had on families, schools, and communities. Speakers will explore what is possible when we truly invest in community safety. 

About the s

Julie Lythcott-Haims is the author of the New York Times best-selling book How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success (2015) and Real American: A Memoir (2017). She is deeply interested in what prevents people from living meaningful, fulfilling lives.

How to Raise an Adult emerged from Lythcott-Haim’s decade as Stanford University’s Dean of Freshmen, where she was known for her fierce advocacy for young adults and her fierce critique of the growing trend of parental involvement in the day-to-day lives of college students. She received the university’s Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for creating “the” atmosphere that defines the undergraduate experience, and toward the end of her tenure as dean she began speaking and writing widely on the harm of helicopter parenting. How to Raise an Adult has been published in over two dozen countries and gave rise to a TED talk that became one of the top TED Talks of 2016 with over four million views, and counting, as well as a sequel which will be out in 2020.

In a different vein, the memoir Real American details Lythcott-Haim’s personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The child of an African-American father and a white British mother, Lythcott-Haims shows how microaggressions in addition to blunt-force insults can puncture a person’s inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American expresses also, through Julie’s path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered “the other.”

Lythcott-Haims received her bachelor’s degree at Stanford University, her law degree at Harvard Law School, and her MFA in writing from the California College of the Arts. She lives in Silicon Valley with her partner of thirty years, their two teenagers, and her mother.

Sinyangwe is a policy analyst and data scientist who works with communities of color to fight systemic racism through cutting-edge policies and strategies. Sinyangwe has supported movement activists across the country to collect and use data as a tool for fighting police violence through Mapping Police Violence and to advance solutions to police violence through Campaign Zero.

Previously, Sinyangwe worked at PolicyLink to support a national network of 61 Promise Neighborhoods communities to build cradle-to-career systems of support for low-income families. He also worked with city leaders, youth activists and community organizations develop comprehensive agendas to achieve quality education, health, and justice for young black men. He has been named one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and The Root 100.

Sinyangwe grew up in Orlando, Florida, and has been involved in organizing and advocacy since he was in high school. He graduated from Stanford University in 2012, where he studied how race and racism impact the U.S. political system.