PACEs Science Champions

It took eight years for Mathew Portell to get an undergraduate degree. Not sure what to major in, the self-described, “free-spirited vagabond” matriculated at more than a handful of colleges and universities throughout the Midwest while working low-paying jobs to support himself. Yet this month, Portell was hired as director of communities for PACEsConnection, where he will help our Growing Resilient Communities and Cooperative of Communities programs find the resources our network provides...

Tom Weidlinger, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and author, realized his childhood was traumatic when he was a teenager. He tells the story in his memoir, The Restless Hungarian. He was in a car with his mother. She had just picked him up from boarding school where he had been sent after his parent’s divorce. She was speeding and swerved violently off the road. “We almost had a crash,” he said, still shaken by the close call with death. “Didn’t you see him,” his mother asked, “the man...

"The ACE Study made perfect sense to me knowing what I was seeing in the children and teens I was working with as well as with the people in my own community. It was like someone gave me the answers to a puzzle."

The accumulation of multiple environmental risks creates pathways from poverty to low academic achievement and limited upward mobility. This is similar to the ACEs model.

This is the third of three stunning illustrations showing how PACEs (positive and adverse childhood experiences) affected the family of Cendie Stanford, graphic artist and founder of the nonprofit ACEs Matter. This one looks at her positive childhood experiences. The day before her 16th birthday, Cendie Stanford’s older brother was shot and killed by a young man who, just two years earlier, had been her boyfriend. “I was heartbroken that two people I loved were out of my life forever,” says...

This is the second of two stunning illustrations showing how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affected the family of Cendie Stanford, founder of the nonprofit ACEs Matter. Each leaf represents a family member affected by ACEs, and the health consequences they suffered. When Cendie Stanford, founder and president of ACEs Matter , finished drawing “My ACEs Tree—Genealogy” —she saw clearly the remarkable number of ACEs her grandparents, parents, children and extended family had experienced.

An FBI Special Agent for 23 years, the last three as the Special Agent in Charge of all operations and activities in the State of Mississippi, Christopher Freeze was well acquainted with the pervasive and generational effects of ACEs, or adverse childhood experiences. But during most of his tenure with the FBI, Freeze says, “ACEs was not on my radar at all.” Freeze’s Southern accent belies his roots in Manchester, Tennessee, a small town 50 miles outside of Nashville, where he milked cows...

Cendie Stanford says that ever since she first learned about ACEs, she’d been thinking about her own upbringing—which included at least 10 ACEs. She felt strongly that everyone needed to know about ACEs, because it “explains why people behave the way they behave.”

WANDA BOONE: A RESILIENCE RAINMAKER Wanda Boone, executive director of a North Carolina nonprofit, Together for Resilient Youth (TRY), to combat youth and adult substance use, not only raised three children of her own but also fostered seven children with mental health and substance use challenges. Despite – or perhaps because – of her own high ACEs score, Boone said that early on she decided “my main goal in life was to be a fantastic wife and mother.” She’s exceeded her goal in many ways.

“I was floored,” she says. “I felt understood. I felt heard. I felt acknowledged. It was confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. That what I was going through was actually normal.”

Our interview for this profile took place over two continents, from the U.S. to Lima, Peru, where Lourdes Valdez, pediatrician in Butte County, California, for 23 years, was attending to family affairs after the death of her mother. Valdez grew up in Lima, and later earned her medical degree in Peru before moving to Iowa City, Iowa, in 1992 for her residency. She said her mother helped make her a resilient person. Although working full time as an economist and statistician, her mother made a...

Dr. Flojaune Cofer is an epidemiologist who wants to improve health and prevent trauma, racism, and inequity in communities throughout California. That’s a big charter, but since 2019, as senior director of policy for Public Health Advocates, she’s making progress with a team focused on public health prevention and restorative justice initiatives. Those initiatives include My Brother’s Keeper, for boys and men of color, and All Children Thrive, which works with 20 cities to prevent youth...