Influencing for Impact: Systems, Communities, and Change

David Bindewald, Director
Center for Play & Exploration

Dave Bindewald directs the Center for Play & Exploration. He is fascinated by the power of curiosity to unlock potential in people and organizations. His experiences with the Center have convinced him of the profound goodness of the world, and that human life and work can be an act of playful exploration. He loves old couples, good teachers, and being pleasantly surprised.

Diane Benscoter, Founder
Antidote.ngo
Cult Deprogrammer

Diane Benscoter is the founder of Antidote.ngo and the author of Shoes of a Servant – My unconditional Devotion to a Lie. She is a speaker and workshop facilitator.  Diane is a former member of the religious cult commonly known as the Moonies.

Drawing from her own experience inside a religious cult and later as a deprogrammer, Diane came to realize the need for an organization that recognizes psychological manipulation as a public health problem.  Antidote is the result of her many years of effort to find a comprehensive solution to the problem of psychological manipulation.  Diane is determined to build a solution that is proportional to the dangerous and harmful effects these deceptive tactics have on individuals, families, and society at large.

Niya Pickett Miller, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of
Communication Studies
Samford University

Niya Pickett Miller, Ph.D., teaches communication studies courses related to race, gender, and culture in the department of Communication and Media and within the university’s core curriculum. Her scholarly work centers on visual and rhetorical criticism of marginal and liminal identities in popular culture. As an albinism advocate, she was a 2019 TEDx Birmingham speaker and actively supports the National Organization for Albinism, including being their 2022 conference keynote speaker.

Libba Vaughan, Executive Director
Leadership Birmingham

Libba Vaughan serves as executive director of Leadership Birmingham, a nonprofit organization created by city leaders in 1982 that is guided by a commitment to thorough education and critical examination of the region’s most pressing issues. Leadership Birmingham unites a diverse group of influential individuals with a call to action to use their network, knowledge, and power to create meaningful civic change.

Prior to Leadership Birmingham, Libba served as executive director of the Freshwater Land Trust in Birmingham. There, she was instrumental in increasing the acreage of land under conservation protection and growing critical connections within Jefferson County’s 750-mile Red Rock Trail System, including the Kiwanis-Vulcan Trail along the crest of Red Mountain.

Libba grew up on Guntersville Lake on the Tennessee River and is a graduate of Sewanee and the University of Minnesota. She currently serves on the board of directors for the Rotary Club of Birmingham, the Friends of Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and the Jefferson State Community College Foundation as well as several community advisory boards. She is a graduate of the Leadership Birmingham Class of 2018 and is a member of the current class of Leadership Alabama.

She and her husband, Brooks, enjoy their two sons, ages 19 and 16. Libba and her family enjoy hiking, gardening, and swimming.

Mark Wilson, MD, Health Officer
Jefferson County Department of Health

Dr. Mark Wilson became Health Officer of Jefferson County, Alabama in 2011, overseeing the various programs of the Jefferson County Department of Health. Before taking this position he served on the Jefferson County Board of Health for three years and worked for over 20 years as a general internist in indigent health care at Cooper Green Mercy Hospital in Birmingham, including several years as outpatient medical director and then chief of staff.

He earned a Bachelor of Civil Engineeering degree from Georgia Tech and his medical degree from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

Since coming to the Jefferson County Department of Health and prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, his priorities have included advancing health equity, improving birth outcomes, addressing the drug addiction crisis, advocating for tobacco-free policy, supporting the development of a trails and greenway system to facilitate outdoor activity, and more recently, establishing a strategy to address violence as a public health problem. He has also worked to expand partnerships between the health department and other community organizations to pursue common goals related to public health.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, he co-led the Jefferson County Unified Command pandemic response along with the county Emergency Management Agency director. On several occasions he issued countywide public health orders and recommendations to help reduce community spread of the coronavirus.

Allison L. Dearing, Executive Director
One Place Family Justice Center

Allison L. Dearing is the Executive Director of One Place Family Justice Center in Birmingham, Alabama. The mission of One Place is to provide coordinated services to victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence through a multi-disciplinary team of professionals who are co-located and working together under one roof. Allison began her career as a Staff Attorney in the Birmingham office of Legal Services Alabama where she represented victims of domestic violence in a variety of civil legal actions, and saw first-hand the need for a more collaborative approach to addressing a crime that is under-reported and often misunderstood. Allison enjoys being part of a team where professionals have a shared purpose and work across systems and disciplines toward a common goal of community safety.

Doug Jones, Former United States Senator

A celebrated prosecutor who brought long-overdue justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Doug has built his career on fighting impossible battles. In 2017, he shocked the political establishment by winning a special election to fill a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama—the first Democrat to do so in 25 years in the state. On Capitol Hill, he quickly built a reputation as a well-regarded and effective legislator, passing more than two dozen bipartisan bills into law in just three years.

Doug’s first job after graduating from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University was as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Sen. Howell Heflin (D-AL). Following his stint in Washington, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1980 to 1984. Doug left government service in 1984 and was in the private practice of law in Birmingham, Alabama, until President Bill Clinton nominated him to the position of U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. His nomination was confirmed by the Senate in November 1997, and he served as U.S. attorney until June 2001. It was while serving in that position that he successfully prosecuted 2 of the 4 men responsible for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church—finally bringing full justice and closure nearly 40 years after the attack that killed four young girls. Along with taking on the Ku Klux Klan, he indicted domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph and prosecuted other criminals who sought to use fear, hatred, and violence to inhibit the rights of others.

Doug is the author of Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing that Changed the Course of Civil Rights which recounts a key moment in our long national struggle for equality and the successful prosecution of two klu klux klan members 40 years later.

In 2022, Doug was selected by President Joe Biden to be the Nomination Advisor for Legislative Affairs to help to guide the selection, nomination, and successful confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States. In this role, Doug continued to upon upon the important relationships he had established while in Congress to help gain bipartisan support for the President’s nominee.

Graham C. Boettcher, The R. Hugh Daniel Director and CEO
Birmingham Museum of Art

Graham C. Boettcher is The R. Hugh Daniel Director and CEO of the Birmingham Museum of Art. He arrived at the museum in 2006, first serving as The Luce Foundation Curatorial Fellow of American Art, and subsequently as The William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art, chief curator, and deputy director, prior to his appointment as director in September of 2017. A native of Bellingham, Washington, Boettcher received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, and an M.A. from the University of Washington. Among his many exhibitions are The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, which was named to “The Season’s Best Museum Shows” by Architectural Digest in 2012, and Black Like Who?: Exploring Race & Representation (with Dr. Kelli Morgan, 2015), which was named a “Don’t Miss” exhibition by the Wall Street Journal. Recent publications include contributions to exhibition catalogue Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890-1980 (2020) and Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection (2021). In March 2020, when the Birmingham Museum of Art closed its doors due to the pandemic, Boettcher launched the “Director’s Cut,” a weekly series of live-streaming tours of the museum’s collection galleries, which was named a recommended “quarantstream” by Good Morning America and ABC News. To date, his virtual tours have garnered more than 43,000 views.