Heritage & Health Series Program

Boasting an exceptional cast and production team, and based on Rebecca Skloot’s critically acclaimed 2010 nonfiction best-seller of the same name, this HBO Films drama tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, an African- American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line, known as HeLa.

Told primarily through the eyes of Lacks’ daughter Deborah (Oprah Winfrey) and journalist Rebecca Skloot (Rose Byrne), the film chronicles Deborah’s search to learn about the mother she never knew, and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks’ cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, from cancer to polio to radiation to AIDS, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever.

Poet Sophia Falco will be reading from her award-winning chapbook The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2019) among other newer poems from her forthcoming full-length poetry collection: Farewell Clay Dove (UnCollected Press). The Immortal Sunflower is a voyage of the mind navigating through intense feelings that expose raw emotions rooted in a troubled psyche, and ultimately the transformation into the light...these highly imaginative, vulnerable, and powerful poems uniquely take on an otherwise typically invisible and often devastating illness—bipolar disorder. Sophia Falco, an individual who is affected by this, captures suffering and hope in unconventional ways including imagery that transcends earth into outer-space. Falco graduated magna cum laude from The University of California, Santa Cruz in June 2020 along with the highest honors in the Literature Department. Read more information about Sophia Falco at her website: https://www.sophiafalco.com/ 

Des Lyons will be sharing with us a microcredit organization targeting women in Guatemala. Namaste Direct creates a new paradigm for Guatemalan women by contributing to those who fight to support their families and themselves by starting small businesses, despite facing vast obstacles.

Cynthia Brannvall is an art historian and a multimedia artist who teaches art history as a full time faculty member of Foothill Community College. She is a California native of African American and Swedish descent. Cynthia has undergraduate degrees in Art Practice and Art History from UC Berkeley where she was a Phi Beta Kappa and a Ronald E. McNair scholar and was awarded the Departmental Citation for her research in Art History. She has an MA in Art History from San Francisco State University with an emphasis on Modern and Contemporary art. An advocate and ally for social justice and equity, Cynthia’s artwork explores identity formation envisioned in an imagined deep time terrain of memory, reclamation, and the geographies of forced and voluntary migrations. Her artwork has been selected for juried group exhibitions in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Washington DC. She has affiliation with SF Moma Artists Gallery and Chandra Cerrito Gallery.

Elaine Henderson is part of the Communications Department at Ohlone College and runs her own consulting business of sexual harassment training

Dr. Kaishauna Guidry is an end-of-life mobile physician based in Southern California. She was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, attended Susan Miller Dorsey High School, then stayed local to attend UCLA. Go Bruins! She has been married to her husband, Javelin Guidry, for almost 24 years. They reside in Murrieta, California and have three young adult children: Javelin K., Elisha, Kailah.

Dr. Guidry received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology, with a minor in Education Studies in 1997. She then taught elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District for a brief time until starting a family with her college sweetheart. They settled in Long Beach, California with Dr. Guidry caring for her family as a stay-at-home mom. After spending 14 years taking care of her children and community through church, youth sports organizations, PTA, etc., she decided to pursue a career in medicine.

As an aptly termed “non-traditional premed student” she attended Long Beach City College, where she tutored science courses. She also took post-baccalaureate coursework at Cerritos College where she served on the Dean’s Advisory Board and as President of the PreMed Club. Once accepted into medical school, she and her family moved to Texas for her matriculation to Texas A&M College of Medicine. Dr. Guidry subsequently matched into the Loma Linda University Medical Center’s Internal Medicine Program. The family happily returned home to California for her training.

Dr. Guidry is a strong healthcare advocate who is passionate about combating healthcare disparities across medical specialties and providing pre-med mentorship to aspiring physicians. She is determined to empower youth for improved diversity in the pipeline of medicine. Her hobbies include traveling to beaches, fine dining, and football—Go LA Rams!

Marissa Elena Yanez, PhD is a former scientist/engineer turned fierce passionate "STEMinist" who works tirelessly and methodically to create, lead and scale programs that empower young women from underserved communities to lead the next generation of computer science innovation. A proud alum of Foothill College, Marissa first discovered her love and talent in STEM through the Foothill-DeAnza partnership with NASA Ames where she took an internship in Mechanical Engineering. After transferring to U.C. Berkeley and double majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science she pursued a PhD at the University of Washington in Bioengineering where she focused on identifying cheap efficient and affordable ways to create diagnostics for health issues in developing countries using microchips and nano-particles. After working for several years as a Scientist at SRI International she moved to Washington DC to work with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Institutes of Health where she focused on identifying innovative ways to streamline and improve healthcare quality, and led efforts to better align scientific innovation at the NIH with the needs of the public health.

In 2014, Marissa followed her ultimate passion to empower society's most vulnerable populations by providing them the tools and infrastructure to become creators and leaders of technological innovation. She founded her own non-profit (Empoder) and has created and led programs in NYC, Silicon Valley, Mexico and Ghana to empower the most vulnerable populations through holistic computer science and STEM education based programs. She has worked with leading institutions including Facebook and Laboratoria in LATAM to understand how society and institutions can connect with and help empower local communities and is fiercely dedicated to creating systems and infrastructure that empower the most vulnerable to achieve equality and success through technology.

Psych Services Counselor Lisa Slede will be facilitating the workshop. Dean of Student Affairs and Activities and Title IX Coordinator, Leticia Maldonado will go over the different components of Title IX.