| Speakers |
Dr. Larry K. Brendtro is founder of Reclaiming Youth International and past president of Starr Commonwealth in Michigan and Ohio. He is a former member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the U.S. He has been a Professor of Special Education in the area of Behavioral Disorders at the University of Illinois, The Ohio State University and Augustana College. He is a licensed psychologist and has authored over one hundred fifty publications including eleven books:
The Other 23 Hours
Positive Peer Culture
Re-educating Troubled Youth
Reclaiming Youth at Risk
Reclaiming Our Prodigal Sons and Daughters
No Disposable Kids
Kids Who Outwit Adults
Troubled Children and Youth
The Resilience Revolution
Response Ability Pathways [RAP] curriculum
Deep Brain Learning
Dr. Brendtro is the senior editor of Reclaiming Children and Youth, a quarterly journal on strength based interventions with youth at risk. (For information on the journal, click here.) Dr. Brendtro is the Dean of the Starr Global Learning Network and has trained professionals in 16 countries. He draws on 40 years of experience in youth work, education, and treatment and holds a Ph.D. in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan.
Karen J. Pittman 
President and CEO, Forum for Youth Investment
Karen has made a career of starting organizations and initiatives that promote youth development – including the Forum for Youth Investment, which she co-founded with Merita Irby in 1998.
A sociologist and recognized leader in youth development, Karen started her career at the Urban Institute, conducting studies on social services for children and families. She later moved to the Children’s Defense Fund, launching its adolescent pregnancy prevention initiatives and helping to create its adolescent policy agenda. In 1990 she became a vice president at the Academy for Educational Development, where she founded and directed the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research and its spin-off, the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work.
In 1995 Karen joined the Clinton administration as director of the President's Crime Prevention Council, where she worked with 13 cabinet secretaries to create a coordinated prevention agenda. From there she moved to the executive team of the International Youth Foundation (IYF), charged with helping the organization strengthen its program content and develop an evaluation strategy. In 1998 she and Rick Little, head of the foundation, took a leave of absence to work with ret. Gen. Colin Powell to create America’s Promise. Upon her return, she and Irby launched the Forum, which later became an entity separate from IYF.
Karen has written three books and dozens of articles on youth issues ... Click here to read more
Dr John Coleman
Dr John Coleman is a clinical and developmental psychologist. He was for many years the Director of the Trust for the Study of Adolescence (TSA), and since October 2006 he has been a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Education at Oxford University. He is the author of numerous books, including “The nature of adolescence” (Routledge, 2011), now in its fourth edition. Together with Dr Ann Hagell he is currently working on a new edition of their book “Adolescence: risk and resilience” first published in 2007. He has been a Senior Policy Advisor in the Department of Health, where he worked on emotional health and well-being in children and young people. He is the Chair of the Association for Young People’s Health and a Trustee of Family Lives. He has a long-standing interest in support for parents of teenagers, and he runs workshops for parents in secondary schools. He was awarded an OBE in 2001 for services to youth justice.
Karyn McCluskey
Director, Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.
Karyn has worked in the police for the last 20 years in Sussex, Lancashire, West Mercia, as head of intelligence analysis. She joined Strathclyde Police 10 years ago as and was responsible for setting up the intelligence analysis function.
In 2004 she and John Carnochan wrote the report on Violence Reduction for Strathclyde police proposing a different way of addressing violence in Scotland. They went on to set up the violence reduction unit. In 2006 they were made a National Unit and lead on violence reduction in Scotland. They have developed injury surveillance, introduced a gang intervention based on Boston Ceasefire, were instrumental in achieving changes to the Lord Advocates guidelines relating to custody for knife carriers. She supports Medics Against Violence charity in Scotland, set up in conjunction with the Violence Reduction Unit, where Doctors and Surgeons attend schools to give inputs on violence reduction and injury and keeping safe.
Karyn trained as a registered nurse, has a BSc and MSc Psychology. She has worked in a variety of areas within the NHS, East Africa and HM Prisons. Click here to read more
Pat Dolan
Professor Pat Dolan is Director of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the National University of Ireland, Galway. In his early career he worked with and for families as a practitioner, service and regional manager. Professor Dolan holds an extensive research and education portfolio and has an extensive range of academic publications in the areas of Social Support, Resilience, Youth Development and Family Support, Mentoring and the theory and practice of Youth Civic Engagement. Professor Dolan holds the first UNESCO Chair in the Republic of Ireland on Children, Youth and Civic Engagement. Guided by UNESCO’s policy, he currently focuses his work on the development of formal and non-formal educational resources for young people that foster their development as civic actors. Professor Dolan is academic advisor to the Youth and Social Sciences Sector of UNESCO, where he co-led on ‘Plan with Youth’, a global forum on youth engagement in October 2012. Furthermore, Pat Dolan has recently participated in the biannual UNESCO Youth Forum, organised as an integral part of UNESCO’s General Conference under the overall theme of Youth and Social Inclusion: Civic Engagement, Dialogue and Skills Development (October 2013 - UNESCO Headquarters, Paris).
Mark Brennan
Mark Brennan, Ph.D. is the UNESCO Chair for Rural Community, Leadership, and Youth Development and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Penn State University. Dr. Brennan’s teaching, research, writing, and program development concentrates on the role of community and leadership development in the youth, community, and rural development process. In this context, much of his work has focused on community action, youth development, locally based natural resource management, economic development, and social justice.
He has over 20 years’ experience designing, conducting, and analyzing social science research related to community and rural development. This work has involved extensive comparative research throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America. Dr. Brennan’s research and program development has been funded by a variety of government, foundation, and private sources and resulting in over 100 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, books, and Extension publications, and over 80 presentations at professional meetings. His recent books include Contemporary Theories of Community and Development (2012) and Community Leadership Development: A Compendium of Theory, Research, and Application (2013). All research outputs have been translated into teaching and outreach curriculum to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to a wider international audience. Click here to read more..
