Keynote Speakers
Monday Opening Session Speaker
Jaiya John
Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and keynote speaker. Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Jaiya’s books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth. He is the author of numerous books, including Daughter Drink This Water, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Fragrance After Rain, and Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation. He is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. Jaiya holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. He is a Lewis & Clark College Distinguished Alumni Award recipient. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.
Dr. John’s book titles include Wildflowers Praying at Midnight, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Volumes One and Two, Dear Artist, All These Rivers and You Chose Love, No Man Came, Fragrance After Rain, Freedom: Medicine Words for Your Brave Revolution, Your Caring Heart: Renewal for Helping Professionals and Systems, Daughter Drink This Water, Calm: Inspiration for a Possible Life, Sincerity of Sunlight, Fresh Peace, Legendary: A Tribute to Those Who Honorably Serve Devalued Children, Beautiful: A Poetic Celebration of Displaced Children, Reflection Pond: Nurturing Wholeness in Displaced Children, Clear Moon Tribe, The Day Jumoke Found His Name, Father to Son: Ode to Black Boys, Habanero Love: A Poem of Sacred Passion, Lyric of Silence: A Poetic Telling of the Human Soul Journey, and Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib
Tuesday Morning Session Speaker
Lily Colby
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Lily Colby, Esq.CEO & FounderLily Colby is the CEO and Founder of the National Network for Foster Sibling Connections. A former foster youth who grew up in a sibling set of four, Lily spent much of her teen years in foster care separated from one or more of her three brothers. Her lived experience drives her lifelong commitment to empower people with lived experience to change systems.
While attending Yale College, Lily volunteered through AmeriCorps and became a kinship caregiver for her younger brother—an experience that solidified her dedication to advocacy. She graduated from Yale with a degree in Economics and later earned her law degree from Berkeley Law.
After law school, Lily received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship with the Youth Law Center and the National Center for Youth Law, where she focused on caregiver engagement and closing the educational gap for foster youth. She has since led state and federal policy efforts on foster care, homelessness, and disability rights.
Lily is also a founder of Elis for Rachael, which successfully settled the most comprehensive mental-health higher-education lawsuit in U.S. history, driving major reforms in university mental-health practices.
In 2025, she launched the National Network for Foster Sibling Connections, which has recruited hundreds of volunteers and trained lawyers, judges, and social workers across the country.
Event Master of Ceremonies
Dee Hankins
With Dee was two months old when he was placed into foster care. He bounced through foster homes until he was 12. Most of his young life he strongly believed that no one cared about him. He felt that it was just him against the world and he was going at it alone with no light at the end of the tunnel. Statistically, almost 50% of African American males placed in the foster care system drop out of high school. They are almost 10 times more likely to end up in a prison than to ever step foot on a college campus. This would have been the case for Dee had he not had support of some key people in his educational life. It was with their help and believe in him that allowed him to graduate from California State University; Long Beach with a B.S. in Criminal Justice. Dee is now on a mission to show every student that they can have a chance at a successful future…no matter their background!
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