Keynoters

Mohsin Mohi Ud Din

Mohsin Mohi Ud Din is the founder of the award winning #MeWeSyria program, and the current Director of Storytelling Innovation for Ashoka's Youth Venture. At Youth Venture, Mohsin leads strategy, design and execution of programs that sync brain science, wellbeing, community-building, and changemaker skills development through the vehicle of communications and storytelling innovation. Before Ashoka, Mohi Ud Din worked in public advocacy and strategic communications for the United Nations and UNICEF. He has been working for various human rights organizations since 2003 and has more than 8 years’ experience working with youth and youth organizations in Asia, MENA and Africa on social and emotional learning, community-building, and empowerment. In 2009, he was granted a Fulbright Fellowship grant to Morocco—where he founded the Me/We storytelling innovation methodology for street children and migrant youth. In 2012 he was named a United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Fellow. Most recently, Mohi Ud Din was awarded recognition as a ‘Solver’ at the United Nations by MiT’s SOLVE community for his innovation with #MeWeSyria, which is co-led by Syrian changemakers across three countries in the Middle East. His work with refugee communities and marginalized youth is regularly featured on VICE Impact, UNHCR Innovation, Huffington Post, and Al Jazeera. He has been a featured speaker at the United Nations, MiT, Asia Society, and the World Economic Forum.

Join Mohsin and the rest of the keynoters for their special pre-conference workshops on Friday, October 12th!

Jennifer Patterson

Jennifer Patterson is a grief worker who uses plants, breath, words and threads to explore queer survivorhood, body(ies) and healing. A queer and trans affirming, trauma-informed herbalist and Breathwork facilitator, Jennifer offers sliding scale care as a practitioner with The Breathe Network as well as through her own practice Corpus Ritual. She is the editor of Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti- Violence Movement (2016), speaks and facilitates trauma-focused writing & embroidery workshops across the country and online and has had writing published in places like OCHO: A Journal of Queer Arts, The Establishment, HandJob, and The Feminist Wire. She is also the creative nonfiction editor of Hematopoiesis Press with the second issue just released. Jennifer also recently finished a graduate program at Goddard College with a thesis focused on translating embodied traumatic experience through somatic practices and critical and creative nonfiction. You can find more at ofthebody.net.

Christylez Bacon & Wytold

Former Artists in Residence at The Music Center at Strathmore, recipients of multiple grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Montgomery County Council on the Arts and Humanities and the Maryland State Arts Council, the duo has performed in over 70 schools offering ‘Classical Hip-Hop’ educational programs to elementary, middle, and high school students. They have been featured performers at the Columbia Festival, The National Gallery of Art and numerous embassies in the District of Columbia. In 2016 the duo co-composed the score for Wooly Mammoth Theater’s critically acclaimed play, “An Octoroon” in which Wytold was a featured performer onstage throughout the show. Twice a year they collaborate with award-winning poets on a week-long “Music and Words” workshop for wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and Fort Belvoir. In 2015, the duo was invited to collaborate on the National Symphony Orchestra’s “NSO In Your Neighborhood” series on a program which featuring fully orchestrated versions of their original compositions performed with the NSO and a DJ to a crowd of over 2,000 at Echostage. In 2016 they performed a version of “Remixing the Classics” especially for family audiences along with the NSO at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall and were invited to collaborate with the NSO in early 2017 on for another “NSO In Your Neighborhood Concert” at THEARC in SE Washington, DC.