Future Medicine: A Conversation on Youth, Healing, and What We’re Really Building
🗓️ May 7th, 5:30PM CST 📍Virtual – FREE
Let’s be honest.
Most “youth mental health” conversations start in the wrong place. They start with what’s wrong with our kids. With statistics. With panic. With a room full of adults who mean well but forgot to ask the young people what they actually need.
We’re not doing that.
At The Forum, we start with what we know: our young people are brilliant. They are carrying things, yes. But they are also carrying things. Vision, imagination, ancestral memory, futures none of us have thought of yet. That’s not a crisis. That’s medicine.
So this conversation starts there.
What if healing isn’t just therapy, but community? What if it sounds like your auntie’s kitchen at 10pm? Feels like a classroom where somebody actually sees you? Looks like a young person building something nobody gave her permission to build?
That’s not a crisis. That’s medicine.
At the Table
Dr. Nneka Sederstrom is The Forum’s Afrofuturist-in-Residence. She holds the long view. Nneka thinks in systems and in futures. Her question: what would care look like if we designed it around our children’s brilliance instead of around their pain?
Marisa C. Williams leads Girl Scouts River Valleys. She holds the daily practice. Marissa knows what it looks like, on a Tuesday afternoon, to create space where a girl gets to be fully and unapologetically herself.
Lyn Ampey is a student leader that is holding the right now. Lyn doesn’t wait for doors to open. When her school had no pathway for students to explore health careers, she built one. She founded Health Equity Readiness (HER) Education Project, serves on the Minneapolis Citywide student council where she served as the student representative for the Minneapolis Public School board and focused on advocating for student wellbeing.
Ebony Eromobor, licensed clinical social worker, founder of Village Support Therapy and Consulting LLC, and a leader in culturally responsive mental health care. Based in Minnesota, she has built a practice focused on expanding access to affirming, community-centered services for underserved populations.
Dara Beevas is CEO of The Forum. She holds the connective thread. Dara’s question is the one The Forum always asks: how do we turn love into infrastructure? How do good intentions become institutions that hold our kids not for a semester, but for a lifetime.
