Conference Weavers and Facilitators

Medria Connolly, PhD Licensed Clinical Psychologist

Medria Connolly is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Monica, California. She received her doctorate from Teachers College and has been in practice for more than 30 years working with adolescents, adults and couples. For the past several years, she has also been an advocate for Reparations to African Americans, resulting in numerous public presentations and several published articles.  She is a co-author of the foundational article for this work, Transforming Ghosts into Ancestors:  Un-silencing the Psychological Case for Reparations to Descendants of American Slavery.  

Bryan K. Nichols, PhD Licensed Clinical Psychologist

Dr. Nichols is an L.A. based Clinical Psychologist with a practice focusing on adults, families and teens. He was also a long time consultant with a Community Based Organization where he was the Supervising Psychologist for a city gang prevention and intervention program. This work yielded insights leading to activism on behalf of reparations to African Americans for the past several years, resulting in numerous public presentations and several published articles. He is a co-author of the foundational article for this work, Transforming Ghosts into Ancestors: Un-silencing the Psychological Case for Reparations to Descendants of American Slavery.

Vanessa Reid, Facilitator 

Vanessa Reid works at the intersection of systems and soul. She is co-founder of the Living Wholeness Institute which works with citizens, teams, organizations and social movements around the globe on initiatives that are transforming broken systems into new sustainable social realities. She has a Masters in Architecture (McGill) and a Masters in Process-Oriented Psychology and Conflict Studies (PWI) and 25 years experience in systems transformation, leadership development and building practice grounds for participatory change processes locally and internationally; including co-initiating The Art of Hosting – Athens to address Greece’s economic and political crisis. She combines a living systems worldview with a practical and poetic sensibility to discover collective ways forward while tending to trauma, diversity and relationship issues and unprocessed history.  She is currently lead faculty at the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning and working on her book, The Wild Life of Dying. Her Tedx talk Conscious Closure and the Wild Life of Dying is one to watch.

Barb Thomas, Educator
Barb Thomas is of Scot and English background, whose ancestors settled in what is currently called Ontario by the St. Lawrence River. She lives in Tkaranto and works as an educator, writer, facilitator, committed to promoting racial justice and democratic process where everyone can participate and contribute. She has worked with unions,
government and many non-profit organizations in Canada and internationally over the past forty-five years. She has co-written several books about the practice of this work including Dancing on Live Embers: Challenging Racism in Organisations. For many years, she has written poetry as a clandestine activity for close family and friends. A
few of her poems have been published in Our Times and a book on grieving called Mourning Has Broken. She self-published two chapbooks of some of these poems in 2021 and 2022 entitled Under the Mask and Bridges of Water.