Keynote Speakers

Robert S. Pynoos, M.D., M.P.H. is Professor of Psychiatry in Residence and Director of the Trauma Psychiatry Program in the Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. In his current role as Co-Director of the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, funded through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Dr. Pynoos is responsible for leading and coordinating a nationwide network of academic- and community-based centers dedicated to raising the standard of care and improving access to services for traumatized children, families, and communities throughout the United States. Dr. Pynoos is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Schools of Physicians and Surgeons and Public Health.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Pynoos has made significant contributions to understanding the impact of children’s exposure to violence and disaster and to elevating the standards of mental health care for child victims and witnesses. He has written extensively about child development and the impact of disaster, violence, and loss on families and school communities. He has edited several widely respected books on posttraumatic stress in children and adolescents, and is a leader in research into the neurobiology of childhood trauma and the impact of trauma on moral development.

Dr. Pynoos has served as Chair for the William T. Grant Consortium on Adolescent Bereavement and for the MacArthur Foundation Network Study Group on Children’s Responses to Traumatic Stress. He has been a consultant to UNICEF for Kuwait after the Gulf War and has had a collaborative partnership with UNICEF to conduct a long-term post-war recovery program for adolescents in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr. Pynoos provided consultation with First Lady Laura Bush in regard to the needs of children and family after 9/11. He served as a consultant to the United States Department of Education after the Oklahoma City bombing; to the Springfield, Oregon Public School District after the Thurston High School shooting; to Jefferson County Mental Health after the Columbine High School tragedy; to the New York City Board of Education, the New York State Office of Mental Health, and the New York City Department of Health in planning post-September 11 mental health responses. Following the hurricane Katrina in 2005, he provided on-site consultation with school districts in the hurricane-affected states.
Dr. Pynoos has received numerous honors including the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Award for his outstanding contribution on child witnesses to homicide, the National Organization for Victim Assistance Award for research, the American Psychiatric Association Bruno Lima Award for excellence in disaster psychiatry, and the 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Victor Rivas Rivers, Child Advocate, Author, Actor, uses his own story of surviving a household where domestic violence and child abuse took place to address both the problems and solutions connected to the issue of family violence. River’s dramatic personal story reflects an amazing portrait of a young man overcoming the odds. Born in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, he came with his family to this country at the age of two, enduring horrific child abuse and witnessing domestic violence on the level of torture at the hands of his father. At the age of fifteen, he took the then-unprecedented step of taking legal action against his father, going on to live with a series of foster families.
Thanks to the intervention of his community, Mr. Rivers turned his life around dramatically, going from hard-core gang member to senior class President and lettering in four sports. He attended Florida State University on a full four-year football scholarship, where he was a team captain and scholar athlete, majoring in criminology and with a minor in psychology. He was the first Cuban American to be given a two season tryout with the Miami Dolphins, and became a free agent draft pick with the Dolphins in the 1978-1979 seasons. This was followed by a successful career in Hollywood where, again as a long shot, he went on to attain starring roles in television, film and on stage. Today Rivers is a veteran star of more than two dozen films and has guest starred in such popular television series as 24, CSI Miami, JAG, Star Trek and Miami Vice. He has just signed on for a recurring role on the NBC show Life.
Author of the highly acclaimed memoir, A Private Family Matter, Rivers has served as the national spokesperson for the National Network to End Domestic Violence since 1999 and in 2007 became a Community Champion for Verizon, their first celebrity advocate to spearhead a far-reaching violence prevention campaign. In describing his own transformation and how his “village” helped raise him, Mr. Rivers seeks in part to cheerlead and inspire, as well as to offer specific tools for advocates and foster parents, and all parts of the community.