KEYNOTE SPEAKER

DAVID R. WILLIAMS, PhD, MPH 
David R. Williams is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University.

Dr. Williams is an internationally recognized authority on social influences on health. His research has enhanced our understanding of the complex ways in which socioeconomic status, race, stress, racial discrimination and religious involvement can affect physical and mental health. He was ranked as one of the Top 10 Most Cited Researchers in the Social Sciences in the world during the decade 1995 to 2005 and as the Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences in 2008. In 2014, Thomson Reuters ranked him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

He has been involved in the development of health policy at the national level in the U.S. He has served on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and on eight committees for the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Williams has also played a visible, national leadership role in raising awareness levels of the problem of health disparities and identifying interventions to address them. This includes his service as the staff director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America and as a key scientific advisor to the award-winning PBS film series, Unnatural Causes: Is inequality Making Us Sick?

COMMUNITY DISCUSSION

MARLA BILONICK
Marla Bilonick is the Executive Director of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC).

Ms. Bilonick is leading LEDC's regional efforts to drive the economic and social advancement of low-to moderate-income Latinos and other DC area residents by equipping them with the skills and tolls to achieve financial independence. She  rejoined LEDC in 2012 as Director of Small Business Development after first working at the organization in 1999 as a microloan officer. As Director, she worked with her team to provide high-quality bilingual training and technical assistance to entrepreneurs and small business owners in the DC metropolitan area. As Director, she worked with her team to provide high-quality bilingual training and technical assistance to entrepreneurs and small business owners in the DC metropolitan area.

JESSICA GORDON NEMBHARD, PhD
Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist and Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Africana Studies Department at John Jay College, City University of NY and author of Collective Courage: A History of African American
Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice.

Dr. Gordon Nembhard is an affiliate scholar with the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan, Canada and a member of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Association of Cooperative Educators. She is also a member of the Shared Leadership Team of Organizing Neighborhood Equity DC, a community organizing nonprofit in the District of Columbia.

DAVID C. HARRINGTON
David Harrington is President and CEO of the Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce. He is also a Senior Policy Advisor for CommonHealth ACTION – a leading nonprofit for improving community health.

Prior to joining the Chamber, Mr. Harrington completed 15 years of public life commencing as Mayor of Bladensburg, Prince George’s County Councilmember and Maryland State Senator. During this period, he was President of the Maryland Municipal League, National Chair of Economic Development with the National Association of Counties and Chair of the Maryland State Task Force on Physical Education.
 

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