There are only 155 days until Warrior Moms from around the world gather in Atlanta on October 14th and 15th for the second annual patient-centered conference on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, the 2016 Warrior Mom® Conference. We’re proud to have grown by 40% this year, welcoming 175 survivors, patients, advocates, and supporters to The Georgian Terrace Hotel and to have tripled our speaker roster.

We have so many great things in store for this year’s conference but we can’t share it all just yet. Today, we have some exciting news to share as we introduce you to our three Keynote Speakers, two Special General Session Speakers, and welcome Cotton Babies back as our National Conference Sponsor!

Announcing Our 2016 Warrior Mom® Conference Keynote and Special General Session Speakers

This year’s theme of Together, Stronger highlights the groundbreaking work of the peer support and advocacy community with these incredible leaders in Maternal Mental Health. They may come to speak to us about peer support, self care, and health equity, but their underlying messages are the same: When we come together as our best selves, we can change the world for families in need.

Kate Kripke

Kate Kripke, LCSW is a perinatal mental health specialist with a private practice in Boulder, CO. She founded the Postpartum Wellness Center of Boulder in an effort to bring skilled and appropriate perinatal mental health support to women and families around Boulder County, CO. Outside of her practice, Kate is committed to increasing education and reducing the stigma and shame surrounding postpartum mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) link PPD. Through these efforts, Kate coordinated a project through Boulder County Public Health that focused on promoting early detection and treatment of postpartum depression, she is a state coordinator for Postpartum Support International, is the Director of the Boulder County Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder Task Force, and she sits on the Pregnancy-Related Depression State Advisory Committee convened by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. In addition, Kate also conducts frequent training on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders at hospitals and health centers for obstetricians, pediatricians, educators, doulas, and nurses. Kate has been a regular contributor to Postpartum Progress since 2010. She’ll be speaking at Everyday Self-Care: Honoring Ourselves, Body & Mind.

Pauline Campos

Pauline Campos is the author of the Amazon Best-Selling memoir, BabyFat: Adventures in Motherhood, Muffin Tops, & Trying to Stay Sane. As Latina Magazine’s #DIMELO love, advice, & relationship columnist, Pauline’s no-hold-barred approach to giving solicited advice has endeared her to the 4.5 million readers who like to stop her in public restrooms and tell her that she’s hysterical. Pauline is the Aspiringmama with the blog to match, a writing coach and freelance editor, and is founder, publisher, editor, and heads up the rest of the crew at www.girlbodypride.com. Her mission as a body image, eating disorder, and mental health advocate and coach, is to inspire women to love themselves where they are in the present moment in order to find true peace and happiness in all aspects of their lives.

In her spare time, Pauline is an award-winning artist, photographer. Her photograph, “Mexican in Maine”, was featured in the From Her: An Art Show About Women For Women show presented by the El Pueblo de Los AngelesHistorical Monument and El Pueblo Park Association and another,”FacePaint”, has earned her the recognition of her peers, most notably as a BlogHerPhoto of the Year honoree. Pauline also has been recognized as a 2015 Top Bloguera by #LATISM, was a Hispanicize TECLA 2015 TECLA Best Parenting Blogger nominee. She also has been featured on NPR’s Latino USA with Maria Hinajosa, Ray’s Latino Talk podcast, and on Redbook Magazine online.

Pauline’s second book, On Raising Wonder Woman: Reflection, Perceptions, & Well-Placed F-Bombs, is coming soon! Pauline’s art and photography be found on Etsy, Society 6, and RedBubble. She lives in northern Maine with her daughter, The Husband, who rescue dogs, a beta fish, a moose, a flying squirrel, and a bear. She will be speaking at Special General Session – Sweeping it Under the Rug: Breaking the Stigma of Maternal Mental Health in the Latino Community.

Dr. Nicole Letourneau

Nicole Letourneau RN PhD FCAHS authored Scientific Parenting: What Science Reveals About Parental Influence (2013). She is Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Nursing and Cumming School of Medicine (Pediatrics & Psychiatry), holds the Palix/ACHF Chair in Parent-Infant Mental Health, and was Canada Research Chair in Healthy Child Development. She leads the CHILDStudies.ca Program studying parenting, attachment and child development in the context of maternal depression and other stress. She develops evidence to guide best practice in parent-child support and intervention, such as her MOMS Link program. She has attained over $32 million in research funding, with nearly $9 million as lead. She has received many honors, including Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 (2007), Excellence/Merit Research awards from Canadian nurses’ provincial associations (2011 & 2015) and named one of four Change Agents by Alberta’s Apple magazine (2016). She has published 120+ peer-reviewed papers, 14 chapters and 80+ opinion-editorials. She will be speaking at Successful Peer Support.

Melanie Mendez-Gonzales

Melanie Mendez-Gonzales is a blogger, speaker and online media entrepreneur. On her blog QueMeansWhat.com, Melanie shares stories and news on education, entertainment, culture and family. Over the last five years, she has built an online community addressing issues that are important to American Latino families. To open conversations about women’s issues, she has served on the TEDx San Antonio Women organizing committee for the last two years. She’s a wife, a mom of two boys and proud Tejana. Find her on social media as @mendezgonzales or @quemeanswhat. She will be speaking at Special General Session – Sweeping it Under the Rug: Breaking the Stigma of Maternal Mental Health in the Latino Community.

Samantha Meltzer-Brody

Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, MD, MPH is a clinician and researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Faculty Development in the Department of Psychiatry and Associate Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Pediatrics. She is the Director of the UNC Perinatal Psychiatry Program of the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders, a comprehensive clinical and research program that includes the first Perinatal Inpatient Psychiatry Unit in the US. Dr. Meltzer-Brody is the recipient of multiple NIH-funded grants that investigate epidemiologic and genetic predictors of postpartum mood disorders. She is the founder and lead investigator on the Postpartum Depression: Action Towards Causes and Treatment (PACT) Consortium that developed and launched the PPD ACT app—a global initiative aimed at understanding why some women suffer from PPD and postpartum psychosis (PPP) and others do not—critical knowledge that will improve detection, prevention and treatment of these conditions. Postpartum Progress is a critical partner of the PPD ACT initiative.

Dr. Meltzer-Brody maintains an active clinical practice, has published over 80 manuscripts, currently participates in clinical trials research in women’s mood disorders, and serves as the mental health consultant for the North Carolina Women’s Health Report Card. She is a frequent contributor to the media including the New York Times, NPR, Huffington Post, and Time Magazine. In 2012, the Triangle Medical Journal selected Dr. Meltzer-Brody as one of the “Top-10 Woman in Medicine” and she was also selected as an inaugural Sanders Clinician Scholar at UNC to develop a novel program to address physician burn-out syndrome. Additionally, in March 2015, she was selected as a HealthCare Hero by the Triangle Business Journal for her work with physician burnout and maternal depression and was awarded the UNC School of Public Health Arnold D. Kaluzny Distinguished Alumni Award. She will be speaking at Health Disparities in Maternal Mental Health: What Can Be Done?

National Sponsor: Cotton Babies

Last year, Cotton Babies welcomed the Warrior Moms of Postpartum Progress to Boston with an amazing video and a message we each needed to hear, “You are One Good Mom,” and we are thrilled to welcome them again in 2016 as our National Sponsor. The company is committed to advocating for the health and well-being of families everywhere and to supporting women in all phases of motherhood, including times when women need to seek outside help to get through their days.

We are so grateful to the team at Cotton Babies for recognizing the significance of how perinatal mood and anxiety disorders deeply affect women and children, and for publicly stating that they stand by and support Warrior Moms. We can’t wait to work with them again and we can’t wait for you to meet them at the Conference! Thank you Cotton Babies!

If you’re interested in attending the 2016 Warrior Mom® Conference, we have some very limited tickets left. You can register today to join us in October in Atlanta. We know you’ll benefit from these five keynote and general session speakers, our National Sponsor, and the other speakers we’ll be announcing in the weeks to come. We’re so excited to come together to celebrate, learn, and work hard to help mamas.