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Jayne Amelia speaks with foster care alumnus and abolitionist, Regina Louise. Regina is a sought-after speaker, teacher, coach, and author. Recently she was the recipient of the prestigious Christopher Award, given to producers for stories that “affirm the human spirit.” In 2019 she received the Jordan Award for service in transforming foster care through advocacy and the arts; the Community Service Award for Children and Families from the Seneca Foundation; and the NAIMC Vision Award for original programming that “reflects the lives, spirit, and contributions of people of color and represents the ethnic and cultural diversity of the viewing audience.” She is the author of the bestselling memoirs "Somebody’s Someone" and "Someone Has Led This Child to Believe". A Lifetime movie, "I Am Somebody’s Child: The Regina Louise Story," is based on her life and was nominated for a 2020 NAACP Award for Best Director.

Her new work is out now: "Permission Granted: Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love" and "Hands On Heart A 60-Day Self-Love Guided Journal."

In 2011, wanting to honor a pledge she made to herself as a young foster child and to support her son who was struggling in college, Regina returned to college. She graduated summa cum laude from the California Institute of Integral Studies and then went on to the University of California, Riverside, to earn an MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts. 

Regina’s work in the theater was nominated for two NAACP Theater Awards. Currently a Hoffman Process teacher, she also leads workshops and has speaking engagements around the country. She is often featured in magazines and on news out- lets, including Good Morning America, PBS, BBC, NBC, CNN, NPR, HLN, and many others.

www.iamreginalouise.com
IG@therealreginalouise
[email protected]

Books by Regina Louise:
Somebody's Someone: A Memoir
Permission Granted: Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love
Someone Has Led This Child to Believe: A Memoir

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Jayne Amelia speaks with artist and foster sibling, Elle Fox. Elle, a high school student, has been sketching for as long as she can remember. Growing up in a family that fostered children, Elle draws on her experience of life, love, and loss while sharing her heart and home for a period of time with numerous babies and children. As an author, illustrator, and entrepreneur, Elle launched Elle Fox Art to showcase her illustrations and share the aspects of life that Inspire her. 

"Hello, I'm Elle Fox and I love to create! I first declared my passion for making art at the age of three, then at five I received my first sketchbook and decided to become an artist! Since then, I've been busy developing my skills in various mediums and cultivating my own artistic perspective. ​I was born in Buffalo, NY but moved to South Australia after preschool, where my experiences at the beach, markets, parks, and art classes inspired me to draw. I've always been ambitious, and with the influence of my grandmother and various other mentors, I decided early on that I would be an art teacher. When I was eight, my family relocated to the Philadelphia area and we welcomed the first of many foster children into our home the following year. The subject matter of many of my projects has been greatly influenced by the children that we've known and loved; they always seem to find their way into the meaning, story, or purpose of my art. Family is vitally important to me, and mine has enormously supported my creativity and allowed me to grow far more than I could have on my own.  Over the years, I have experimented greatly with how to share my work when I stumbled across an idea for a children's book that I couldn't let go to waste. Now, thanks to the goodness of God and the amazing people who've helped me along the way, I have been able to fully embrace this medium of storytelling."

ellefoxart.com
IG @ellefoxart
Meatball and Little Birdie available on Amazon and elsewhere.

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Jayne Amelia speaks with former foster youth, Adisa. Adisa compares himself to a lion cub who had to fight for survival all his young life against the bigger badder lions all so hungry and looking to feed.  Born in Long Beach to a single mom who was declared unfit to raise her children, he grew up on the streets of Los Angeles. Adisa and his siblings were removed from her and placed in foster care. Adisa was only nine at the time (but already considered himself a "hoodlum" as he says) and was the protector of his youngest brother who was still in diapers. He became part of the foster care to prison pipeline and was incarcerated at 17 until freed at the age of 51.

He is now employed with Urban Alchemy in San Francisco’s Tenderloin cleaning up the streets and saving the lives of vulnerable people every night.

Urban Alchemy

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Jayne Amelia talks with therapist Dr. Mimi Savage.
In this episode Mimi describes her upbringing: "My parents are not who I am. My mother's a white woman, my father's a black man. I am born of the two of them, a melange, a mixture. But I had to find my way. And it's not just about race. As I say this to your listeners, everyone needs to find their way. And it's foster care, it's psychiatric units, it's the world, it's the women on skid row whom I've become very close to, many of those women. It's all of us finding our way.  We have to have empathy, but we have to be careful about owning other people's stories. So that's what I mean about I have my biases and to check myself to do my own work around that. I usually do it through some sort of art practice. And how is it that I can be of assistance to others? There was a point in my life, it was a difficult point in my life where things just were all falling apart. And I remember I made a promise to the gods that if I could get through this and I've never really shared this with anyone publicly that I really, please help me get through this. And my goal is to just be of service. And also trauma. Trauma from foster care, trauma from wherever the trauma comes from. When I was on skid row, everyone there had trauma. And I thought at first that I wasn't as connected to homeless folks, but it turns out I found out I had a lot in common with them. Really? Again, I wasn't conscious. So I think part of this is also becoming conscious. Becoming conscious and being authentic to oneself and how all of that is part of healing. Yeah, that's what I discovered on skid row that I was very much akin to all the women that I was working with there."

Myriam Savage, Ph.D., RDT/BCT is a registered drama therapist and board-certified trainer. Her alma maters include Lesley University, Cal State University LA, Princeton University and The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, NYC. She has developed drama and expressive therapy programs in acute inpatient units for children and adults for several years and facilitated neuro-diverse populations, homeless women, adolescents in residential rehabilitation and children in educational settings. Dr. Savage is a core faculty member of Counseling & EXA and founding faculty of  UCLArts and Healing Social Emotional Arts (SEA), a manualized professional development program that instructs on therapeutic uses of the expressive arts. She is founder/director of SoCal Drama Therapy Center, mentoring an international student body of professionals earning RDT credentials.

Serving as Education Chair for the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA) (2019-2021), she devised the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative, coordinating NADTA outreach to HBCU’s in order to positively affect Black diaspora inclusion and education within drama/expressive therapies fields.

A recipient of a Drama Therapy Fund Professional Research Grant, her published work and conference presentations focus on adoption from foster care and intersections of identity using narrative inquiry and novel narrative arts-based digital media interventions.  

http://www.SoCalDramatherapycenter.com

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimi-savage-phd-rdt-bct-b0179931/

Credly:  https://www.youracclaim.com/badges/1771757d-0402-47fa-97cd-46c02a6b3c17/public_url

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Jayne Amelia speaks with former foster youth Jeremiah McWright.  Jeremiah is from Sacramento, California. At 15, his four siblings and he were removed from their family and put into the system. After two years and 15 placements, Jeremiah was shipped to a low-level group home in San Francisco. He started his career at 17 in San Francisco as a cinematographer for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. He's since spent over 2000 hours behind the camera in situations of every kind; find his work here. Soon after moving, he joined the San Francisco chapter of California Youth Connection, a rather large (30 chapters in CA) non-for-profit responsible for the top foster care legislation in California. After graduating from San Diego State University, he moved to Los Angeles to work out of the Wolf of Wall Street's mansion. Now a recruiter for Amazon Prime Video, he's managed  - at the ripe age of 24 - proven himself to be a successful  statistic. To connect with Jeremiah regarding interviews, business, or general questions, reach him at [email protected]. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiahmcwright/

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Jayne Amelia speaks with foster and adoptive mom, Jennifer Stern. Jennifer and her husband decided to become a foster family after realizing their dinner table was too quiet and knowing they had space in their home and hearts to welcome more children. They wanted to foster after learning how great the need is for foster families who can provide a safe and loving home for children in the system. They are grateful every day for their non-traditional path toward expanding  their family. Jennifer is a mom to two daughters; when she isn’t being a mom, wife, daughter, sister and friend, she enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, and watching reality tv.

​​Jennifer has spent almost  20  years working in roles to address the educational inequities in our K-12 education system. She is currently the CEO of a non-profit organization working to ensure all students have access to a great school.

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Jayne Amelia speaks with Kendra Lukens. In her words:  “My name is Kendra, I spent my entire life going in and out of the foster system after the death of my father in 2012. This started a spiral of abusive homes, and losing hope in a lot of people. After recently aging out at 18, I started a podcast of my own, HEAR US YELL, where I’m able to bring more people together through a common factor of the foster system. I will also be going to college to study criminal justice and social work to go deeper into the system and help to fix the flaws.”

 Hear Us Yell podcast

Social Media Links:chttps://linkin.bio/kendralukens

@hearusyellpodcast

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Jayne Amelia speaks with Emi Nietfeld. Emi is the author of the memoir Acceptance, published by Penguin Press. A former foster youth, she graduated from Harvard in 2015 and worked as a software engineer at Google and Facebook. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vice, and Slate, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and noted in The Best American Essays. She lives in New York City with her family. Emi is now a full-time writer and speaker. 

https://linktr.ee/eminietfeld

Book link: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/692775/acceptance-by-emi-nietfeld/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/eminietfeld

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eminietfeld/

Website: https://eminietfeld.com/

Newsletter sign up: bit.ly/eminewsletter

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Jayne Amelia speaks with Breyon Johnson. Breyon is a former foster youth and now a student at Santa Monica college studying to be a storyboard artist and writer. She’s currently working as an intern at Better Youth,  a nonprofit that helps youth who face adversity get their foot in the door in entertainment to work in film, video games and animation; and she's also working at Skydance. Breyon worked at other internships making films and creating content that can help former foster youth just like her. She’s also written a film called “System Failer” that won second place in the film festival that partnered with Kids in the Spotlight and Warner Brothers.

BetterYouth.org
Independent Living Program
Skydance Media

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Jayne Amelia talks with activist David Ambroz. David is a national poverty and child welfare expert and advocate, and author of a new memoir “A Place Called Home.”  He was recognized by President Obama as an American Champion of Change. Currently serving as the Head of Community Engagement (West) for Amazon, Ambroz previously led Corporate Social Responsibility for Walt Disney Television, and has served as president of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission as well as a California Child Welfare Council member.

After growing up homeless and then in foster care, he graduated from Vassar College and later earned his J.D. from UCLA School of Law. He is a foster dad and lives in Los Angeles, CA.

davidambroz.com
A Place Called Home

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