Need someone for your event, webinar, or workshop? Renowned for her relatable knowledge and firm grasp of the neurobiology of stress, Donna’s warm, accessible style will leave your audience inspired.
Speaking
“Our Open Mind event featuring Donna Jackson Nakazawa was truly one of the best programs (and we have done over 100) we have ever had the privilege of presenting. Donna gave us so much valuable information in a clear, concise, relatable, and “straight from the heart” way!”
—Vicky Goodman, President and Founder, UCLA Open Mind Speaker Series
“We were thrilled with Donna’s talk! It was outstanding! For 30 years we’ve asked outstanding thought leaders to present their work to audiences across the country, and Donna’s presentation topped my best of the best list!”
—Gilda Ross, Glenbard Parent Speaker Series
Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning science journalist, author of seven books, and speaker whose work explores the intersection of neuroscience and emotion. Her latest book, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media, was named “a best book of 2022” by The Washington Post. Donna’s other books include The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine, named one of the best books of 2020 by Wired magazine, Childhood Disrupted, a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award, and The Last Best Cure. Her writing has appeared in Wired, The Boston Globe, Psychotherapy Networker, Stat, The Washington Post and Health Affairs. She has appeared on The Today Show and NPR and is a regular speaker at universities and organizations, including Child Mind Institute, UCLA Open Mind, the Harvard Science Library Series, UCLA Health, Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, Children’s Hospital Association, and the University of Arizona. Donna is also the creator and founder of the narrative writing-to-heal programs Breaking Free From Trauma, and Your Healing Narrative, which help participants to create a powerful, inner healing narrative that calms the body, brain, and nervous system.
You can find her on:
Instagram: @DonnaJacksonNakazawa
Girls on the Brink
Raising Emotionally Healthy Girls
From award-winning journalist and author of GIRLS ON THE BRINK, CHILDHOOD DISRUPTED, and THE ANGEL AND THE ASSASSIN: a new and important talk for parents, educators, and practitioners, exploring the causes of the mental health epidemic facing girls today – and revelatory new strategies to help girls thrive.
Our girls are simply not okay. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 3 teenage girls have seriously considered suicide, and 57 percent report feeling “persistently sad or hopeless.”
At last, we have a roadmap to help them. The latest findings from the annals of neuroscience offer us surprising and valuable new insights. In this lecture, Donna deftly braids together this latest research to show why so many girls today are struggling – and how we can help them thrive even in troubled times. She delves deep into:
- The top 10 things girls tell Donna they wish the adults in their lives knew; based on her interviews with thousands of girls at events around the country.
- Revelatory new science on how unrelenting stress affects girls’ health and development in unique ways – and why we’re just learning about this science now.
- Why chronic stress during the critical developmental window of puberty can ramp up girls’ stress machinery in ways that cand derail mental health.
- Why, at the onset of puberty, this can translate into double and triple the rates of anxiety and depression in girls compared to boys.
- What it means for girls’ well-being that puberty is happening earlier today, before adolescence.
- How social media interferes with girls’ sense of safety and belonging at a crucial juncture in development.
- Why excessive social media use is so harmful for girls.
- Why we need to ensure girls enjoy a period of pressure-free exploration during the all-important “in-between years” of 7 – 13.
- What all this means for raising and educating emotionally healthy boys, too!
Lastly, Donna answers the question that all parents, teachers, and practitioners want to know: What can we do to help girls thrive? The good news: during adolescence the brain is highly flexible and responsive to the right kinds of support. Donna lays out 15 science-backed “antidote” strategies to help girls flourish in these challening times. This illuminating talk provides a new playbook for how we—parents, families, and communities—can ensure all of our girls thrive.
This talk can be geared to parent groups; as professional development training for schools; for behavioral health professionals; or medical practitioners. In school settings, Donna often pairs this even with the following talk, in which she works directly with girls in an interactive workshop.
Girls on the Brink
A Talk for High School Girls
In this interactive lecture, Donna asks middle- and high-school girls to write down on Post-it notes, anonymously, what they wish the adults in their lives knew, what they worry most about but have trouble saying out loud, and what they wish the adults were doing differently.
As Donna dialogues with girls she asks them to write down anything they want the adults to know, and pass those notes up to her, on a range of topics, including:
*how they talk to themselves (hint: most girls regularly critique and put themselves down without even realizing it)
*how they can learn to talk to themselves differently (including science-based tools to do this and why intervening in negative self-talk matters to their mental health)
*why it’s important to drop down inside and assess how they feel when they scroll on social media (plus how to dial down on social media use & why this matters more than they realize to their day-to-day emotional health)
*how to discern what their hearts, bodies, and minds need most when they’re stressed-out
*who they can turn to — at school and home — when they most need support, and how to ask for help
*and so much more!
Donna intersperses her questions for girls with nuggets of science to help them understand how rising psychological stress in their lives is intersecting with changes in their bodies and brains during puberty and adolescence.
Donna invites girls, too, to try fast, science-proven writing techniques and mind-body calming strategies in real time — strategies they can use anytime to help them ground themselves and find new layers of calm.
As a powerful close to this event, Donna reads the powerful messages that girls have written and passed up to her out loud, anonymously, to help girls voice their struggles and be heard.
This talk is often paired with a separate talk geared to parents and/or educators.
UCLA Health event featuring the science and solutions Donna writes about in GIRLS ON THE BRINK, hosted by George Slavich, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and Director of The California Stress, Trauma & Resilience (CAL STAR) initiative at UCLA. Dr. Slavich and Donna talked about the mental health epidemic plaguing our girls and science-based solutions to mitigate the effects of stress on girls and youth today.
Here’s a sneak peek at topics Donna will address in her upcoming talks exploring today’s mental health epidemic facing girls and young women today, and how to reverse the paradigm. These clips are part of a book launch conversation with therapist Jake Ernst MSW.
The Angel and the Assassin
How The Tiniest Cell in the Brain Shapes our Life-Long Well-Being, and How we Can Harness This Science to Heal
Based on her 2020 book, The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell that Changed the Course of Medicine, Jackson Nakazawa offers a fascinating look at one of the most important and recent discoveries in all of medicine – the role of a tiny brain cell, called microglia, in determining brain health – and how these findings from the latest annals of neuroscience change everything we thought we knew about our mental and physical well-being.
Heralded by leaders across medicine and psychiatry for offering an inspiring, revolutionary new way of thinking about human thriving, in this talk Donna relates the tale of how science overlooked the power, peril, and promise of this tiny brain cell for almost a century, explaining how microglia act as the angels or assassins of the mind, either protecting or destroying the neural synapses we rely on for our mental well-being, leading to or helping to prevent disorders from anxiety to depression to Alzheimer’s.
With a gift for compelling and compassionate storytelling, Donna articulates:
* The biological basis of the mind-body connection; how our brain – governed by microglia – acts as our “seventh sense,” responding to ever-changing cues in our environment.
* The ways in which this intricate, unseen dance between our brain and the world around us can affect us for good or ill across the lifespan — starting in childhood.
* Why the female brain-immune response is even more robust in the face of chronic environmental stressors (as compared to males), explaining why girls and women face higher rates of depression and autoimmune disorders.
Most importantly, she offers hope as to how we can harness this new understanding into solutions for addressing today’s growing mental health crisis, offering us a radically reconceived picture of human health, childhood development, and how we can help heal ourselves.
Keynote for the 2019 New Jersey Prevention Network Annual Conference in Atlantic City, “Creating Connections” – Childhood, Disrupted, and How we Can Heal Communities, Families, and Ourselves
The connection between physical inflammation and psychiatric disorders is a 300-year-old medical mystery. But, recently, Harvard researchers found the answer: a tiny immune cell called microglia, which, when exposed to chronic stress, prunes away important synapses in the brain. Donna reports on the role of this long-overlooked cell in her keynote for the 2019 Care Plus Annual Conference.
Childhood Disrupted
How Children’s Biography Becomes Their Biology – and How We Can Heal
Inspired by her book, Childhood Disrupted, Jackson Nakazawa offers a clear-eyed picture of the latest science on how chronic, unpredictable stressors in childhood can leave long-lasting “fingerprints” on children’s developing brains and bodies, affecting how well they love and learn for life, and their mental and physical health as adults.
With surprising up-to-the-minute facts and compelling anecdotes from the annals of medicine, Donna opens up a much-needed conversation, deftly touching (in different forms of this talk) on:
* How and why chronic childhood stressors trigger epigenetic and biophysical changes that, in turn, set the stage for physical and mental health disorders.
* Why even seemingly “mild” and common traumas or family dysfunction can cause deep changes to the architecture of the brain and body.
* How chronic toxic stress alters connectivity in areas of the brain crucial to mental health.
* Why women are particularly vulnerable to the biological effects of chronic stressors.
* The healing neurobiological “superpower” of our human connection.
* The crucial importance of benevolent childhood experiences in ameliorating the effects of toxic childhood stress.
Most importantly, Donna compassionately addresses how each of us can take science-based steps to evince our own post-traumatic growth; as well as the role of parents, practitioners, and educators in creating healthier, more resilient children, families, and communities.
Find out more information about Donna’s courses and workshop (Creating Your Healing Narrative: A Writing to Heal and Neural Re-Narrating™) which she offers to organizations and individuals here.
Testimonials from Organizations for Keynote Lectures
“I found this webinar to be spectacular and so vitally important to, well, everyone. I can’t imagine any improvement other than another webinar with Donna Jackson Nakazawa to further discuss her work.”
—Attendee, The California Trauma-Informed Care Academy
“I come to you as a grandmother with a grandson with celiac disease. He has behavioral issues that I have long believed related to soft trauma, genetics, his autoimmune disease, etc. I have been searching in literature for the link between biology, mental illness, the immune system, and trauma. Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s work provided me with that link. I shall be forever grateful.”
—Attendee, The California Trauma-Informed Care Academy
“Donna Jackson Nakazawa brought her unique passion along with her incredible depth of knowledge on how trauma changes the brain and body – and how we can help build resiliency – to our 2018 Inaugural Dis{RU}pt Trauma Conference. When you hear her speak you can’t help but begin to approach the individuals you serve with a more trauma-informed lens. Her contributions continue to fuel Rutgers’ University Behavioral Health Care to carry out our mission.”
—Maureen A. Brogan, Program Manager, Rutgers Health, University Behavioral Health Care
“Wow! We received such great feedback after Donna’s keynote for our 2020 conference! Attendees told us: ‘This was the best presentation I’ve ever attended!,’ ‘I want every practitioner and parent to see this! ‘Donna was a great presenter and her material was very much valued — I loved this program!,’ ‘This was a fantastic program!’ and “This program helped us to understand root causes for distress in those we serve, enables us to better assist them and help them understand themselves better, and support stronger recoveries!'”
—Tina Aue, Director, Center for Prevention and Counseling
“Donna’s keynote for our day-long event at Johns Hopkins Hospital was superb. A terrific speaker, she clearly articulated her deep understanding of neurobiology and helped us to understand the powerful and lasting effects that high emotional stress can have on a human life. Having Donna speak to this part of life, including addressing our own traumas, opened up a new dialogue for us. ”
—Ty Crowe, Director of Johns Hopkins Hospital Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy
“Donna served as our keynote speaker at the Royal Society of Medicine in London at our October 2017 conference, Chronic Pain: The Role of Emotions. The way in which she interwove evidence-based studies with stories, metaphors, and real-life examples made her talk a captivating journey for our audience from start to finish. Donna eloquently handled every query from the audience and the feedback we received was excellent.”
—Georgie Oldfield, Founder, SIRPA
“Donna is a talented presenter, who delivers sensitive subject matter with an open heart, that highlights her research, skill and knowledge of trauma, neurobiology, and resiliency. Her message was well received by our audience of over 500 people.”
—Birley Wright, Prevention Training Manager, Children’s Trust of South Carolina
“Donna keynoted our 2019 annual luncheon conference and provided our 600 guests with a powerful and effective message . . . an understanding of the cutting-edge science on both chronic stress and resiliency, children can overcome adversity in their youth. Our audience stayed thoroughly engaged throughout Donna’s impactful presentation and many reached out afterwards to tell us how inspired they had been by her talk. We will have her back again.”
—Brian Maness, President and CEO of Children’s Home Society of North Carolina
“For those of us who work with children who have experienced trauma, Donna Jackson Nakazawa gave our clinicians at our 2019 annual Care Plus Foundation Conference new insight and concrete action plans to address and work to reverse children’s trauma, inspiring a more wholistic approach to care – insight rooted in up-to-the-minute science.”
—Christine Brewster, Executive Director, Care Plus Foundation
In her keynote for the 2019 New Jersey Prevention Network Annual Conference, Donna discusses the importance of kids’ having consistent, protective, reliable, and supportive relationships with adults.
Testimonials from Audience Members
“I loved the way that Donna brings her points home through metaphor and story-telling – so that the science is easy to understand and the take-away can never be forgotten.”
“As a clinician and a mom of a 14-year old, Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s compassionate presentation reminded me that the trauma lens is not something we simply pull out from 9 to 5. It is the way to view the world. Her shared knowledge has helped me to be a better parent….I know how to foster my daughter’s resiliency. Thank you! Please keep the work going.”
“Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s message hit home with me. This was crucially valuable information we’ve never heard before in our training. Donna changed how I see the young people I treat every day, and how I see my own journey to healing so that I can be a better clinician, and also a better parent in my own livingroom.”
“This was fantastic! Donna is a dynamic speaker, informative, impassioned and insightful about how our bodies and brains are in a constant dance with our environment, and how we can help ourselves and others find resiliency in the face of chronic stressors.”
“Important and empowering for us as teachers trying to help those we care for, at work and at home. I loved how Donna spoke to us from a place of compassion. She understood that we are doing very difficult jobs every day, as we help the patients we see, and many of us are also seeking post-traumatic growth for ourselves. Thank you!”
“Donna’s informative and engaging presentation was warmly welcomed by our community of practitioners. Weeks later, my colleagues and I are still strategizing and implementing ways to utilize the insights Donna shared so that we can re-calibrate our own approaches and programming, and better help our patients.”
Testimonials from “Creating Your Healing Narrative” Workshop Participants
“This workshop is powerful, like moving through many years of really good therapy condensed into a couple of hours!”
“Donna embodied the presence of a conductor orchestrating music as she invited us to create our own compassionate narratives out of the truths revealed in our own writing.”
“Thank you Donna. What a gift you have in putting together and facilitating an experience that was quite emotional and personal, yet felt comfortable and safe.”
“The thoughtful, caring way you talk us through the experience really enabled me to deeply remember, feel, and share. This valuable experience has certainly left me with much to continue to learn and grow from!”
“Donna has a natural healing presence and is able to create a sense of safety, which can be especially hard to do virtually.”
“The healing I experienced in this workshop was so powerful… thank you for helping us to restore ourselves so we can also better help others.”
“I came away with such positive tools to use in all situations of my life. Thank you Donna for the timeliness of this workshop and for your guidance!”
“I just want to thank you. Wow. I shed tears. What a very meaningful couple of hours. It couldn’t have been more powerful. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us, Donna.”
“This workshop allowed me a great and needed space to reflect and grow in mindful awareness about how my past adversity affects me in my present life. I especially loved that you left us with so many new tools for flourishing.”
“By the end of this webinar I felt a sense of fullness and well-being that I have not felt for some time now. Thank you.”
“Your content was timely and powerful for me, and left me with much to contemplate further as I take these tools and continue to use them in my home and work life.”
Previous Lectures
Donna Jackson Nakazawa has keynoted over 200 national and international conferences for universities, organizations, and schools. Her presentations offer continuing education credits.
2024 UCLA Open Mind Speaker Series
2024 Glenbard Parent Series
2023 Child Mind Institute
2023 Indiana Mental Health Summit
2023 Rutgers Behavioral Health
2023 Family Action Network
2023 Bryn Mawr School
2023 International Coalition of Girls’ Schools
2022 Children’s Hospital Association, Helping Girls Thrive: Examining Trends in Girls’ Mental Health
2022 UCLA Health, The California Stress, Trauma & Resilience initiative (CAL STAR)
2022 Rutgers Behavioral Health Disrupt Trauma Conference, Girls on the Brink
2021 Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine Annual Conference, U. of Arizona
2021 Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine IMER Medical School Rotation, U. of Arizona
2021 Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, IMmersive Narrative Writing Workshop
2021, 2020, 2019 Columbia-Bassett Medical School
2021 Peace & Justice Institute Annual Conference, Orlando, FL
2020 Harvard Division of Science Cabot Library Series, Cambridge, MA
2020 Innovations in Recovery Annual Conference, Hampton, NH
2020 Center for Prevention and Counseling Annual Conference
2020 State of our Children Annual Conference, State of California
2020 Credible Health Annual Conference, Baltimore Convention Center
2019 Care Plus of New Jersey Annual Conference
2019 New Jersey Prevention Network Annual Conference
2018 Rutgers University Behavioral Health Annual Conference
2018 Lee Health Golisano Children’s Hospitals Annual Conference, Fort Myers, FL
2017 The Royal Society of Medicine Conference on Chronic Pain and Emotion, London, England
2017 Children’s Trust of South Carolina Annual Conference, Columbia, SC
2017 Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, Stony Brook, NY
2017 Learning & The Brain Annual Conference, Arlington, VA
2016 Johns Hopkins Conference on Trauma Informed Healing, Baltimore, M
2016 Legal Aid Society of New York
2016 Safe Shores DC Children’s Advocacy Center, Washington, DC
2016 Duke Women’s Forum
2012 8th International Congress on Autoimmunity, Granada, Spain
2010 National Institutes of Health, Autoimmune Diseases Summit, Washington, DC
2010 The Lupus Foundation, New Haven, CT
2009 92nd Street Y’s “To Your Health” Lecture Series, New York, NY
2009 American College for Advancement in Medicine Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV
2009 Johns Hopkins “A Woman’s Journey” Annual Conference, West Palm Beach, FL
2009 Roadblock to Recovery, Scottsdale, AZ
2009 Lupus Foundation, Verona, NY
2009 Lupus Alliance, Depew, NY
2008 Johns Hopkins Annual Conference “A Woman’s Journey,” Baltimore, MD
2008 Johns Hopkins Project Restore, Redmond, WA
2007 The Association of Independent Schools of New England Annual Diversity Conference, Boston, MA
2006 The Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington Annual Diversity Conference, Washington, DC
2005 Association of Independent Schools of Maryland School Counselors
2004 Association of Independent Schools of Maryland Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD
2004 Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore
2003 Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington School Counselors Group
Schools:
Bryn Mawr School, Baltimore, MD
Buffalo Seminary, Buffalo, NY
Sidwell Friends School, Washington, DC
McDonogh School, Baltimore, MD
Bank Street School, New York, NY
Potomac School, McLean, Virginia
Wilmington Friends School, Wilmington, DE
Georgetown Day School, Washington DC
St. Stephens and St. Agnes School, Alexandria, VA
Maret School, Washington DC
Edmunde Burke School, Washington, DC
Green Acres School, Rockville, MD
The Key School, Annapolis, MD
Indian Creek School, Crownsville, MD
Calvert School, Baltimore, MD
When kids face chronic adversity, they get stuck in the first half of the stress cycle, setting the stage for health issues years down the line. Fortunately, there are steps that parents can take to help them turn off the “fight, flight, freeze” response. Donna outlines one strategy in this clip from the 2019 New Jersey Prevention Network Annual Conference.
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
author of Girls on the Brink and Childhood Disrupted
Author photo copyright © Marshall Clarke
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