Howard Center Annual Conference 2022

Vision, Visionaries, & Voices

REGISTRATION OPENS FEBRUARY 7, 2022

2022 Conference Details:

Confronting Stigma. Improving Access. Continuing Advocacy. Advancing Policy. Giving Voice. Please join us online for a day of inspiration, learning, and rich conversation at Vision, Visionaries and Voices, our fifth annual spring conference on April 7, 2022 from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm.

Our speakers will provide unique perspectives for a broad audience, including educators, healthcare providers, representatives of local and state government, legal and law enforcement professionals, and community members. We expect attendees from throughout Vermont, New York, New England, and Canada.

Featured Speakers:

Anita Hill

The youngest of 13 children from a farm in rural Oklahoma, Anita Hill received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980. She began her career in private practice in Washington, D.C. Before becoming a law professor, she worked at the U. S. Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989, Hill became the first African American to be tenured at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law, where she taught contracts and commercial law. She has made presentations to hundreds of business, professional, academic and civic organizations in the United States and abroad.

Hill’s new book, Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence, is a new manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a powerful call to arms from one of our most prominent and poised survivors.

Byron Katie

In 1986, at the bottom of a ten-year spiral into depression and self-loathing, Byron Katie woke up one morning in a state of joy. She realized that when she believed her stressful thoughts, she suffered, but that when she questioned them, she didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Her simple yet powerful process of self-inquiry, which she calls The Work, consists of four questions and the turnaround, which is a way of experiencing the opposite of what you believe. Katie has been bringing The Work to millions of people for more than thirty years. Her public events, weekend workshops, intensives, and nine-day School for The Work have brought freedom to people all over the world.

Her books include the bestselling Loving What Is, I Need Your Love—Is That True?, A Thousand Names for Joy, and A Mind at Home with Itself. For more information, visit thework.com.

Ethan Nadelmann

Described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad. He founded and directed first The Lindesmith Center and then the Drug Policy Alliance from 1994 to 2017, during which time he and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana and advance other alternatives to the war on drugs.  Ethan currently hosts the leading podcast on all things drugs: PSYCHOACTIVE.

Tara Westover

Tara Westover is an American author. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. An older brother taught her to read, and after that her education was erratic and haphazard, with most of her days spent working in her father’s junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. After that first encounter with education she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She received an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009 and in 2014 was awarded a PhD in history. In 2018, she published her memoir, Educated, which explores her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her desire to be loyal to her family. Educated was an instant commercial and critical success, debuting at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remaining on the list for more than two years.

If you are interested in supporting this annual event, please download our sponsorship packet for more information. To view last year’s program guide, you may click here.

2022 Annual Conference sponsors!