Vanessa, a Certified Child Life Specialist, Board Certified, Registered and Licensed Art Therapist, and Registered Play Therapist, has over 15 years working in the field. Vanessa is currently the Director of Child Life, Recreation and Volunteers at Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center in New York where she utilizes her experience to help residents and families navigate their medical journey. When working with families and children, Vanessa uses her expertise in trauma-informed and family-centered care to focus on family strengths while building resilience. Vanessa has had extensive experience helping families navigate grief, loss, trauma, and coping and is the founder and owner of her private practice, Imagine Me Shine, where she sees clients weekly. Vanessa is also the current Treasurer for Child Life of Greater New York as well as an adjunct professor at Bank Street College of Education. She enjoys teaching immensely as it keeps her current in the field and allows her to help students navigate their path to becoming a Certified Child Life Specialist.

Kayleigh works as a Certified Child Life Specialist in multiple units at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. However, you will often find her working in the Emergency Department, as she loves the fast-paced atmosphere and supporting children and families through trauma. She balances her clinical work by teaching online child life courses where she is passionate about educating and supporting aspiring child life specialists. Kayleigh serves on the Child Life Certification Commission for ACLP, coaching individuals as they create items for future child life certification exams. She presented at the 2019 Child Life Annual Conference on child life’s role in supporting children of abuse. Also, she was a selected participant in the ACLP Child Life Job Analysis in 2018, creating the latest child life exam content outline. Kayleigh attended Loma Linda University where she received her M.S. in Child Life after attending California State University, Fullerton for her B.A. in Communication Studies

Danielle Blackburn, MSBA, CCLS is a pediatric data analyst and certified child life specialist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. After working as a child life specialist in surgery and radiology, she transitioned into a role doing data analysis on pediatric outcomes with physicians, administrators, child life specialists, and other hospital caregivers. Additionally, Danielle is the data analyst for the Association of Child Life Professionals (ACLP), doing ongoing analysis investigating insights from the Child Life Professional Data Center and child life specialists' capacity for patient and family impact. Danielle is passionate about using both quantitative and qualitative data to improve care for children in hospitals through quality improvement and research. In particular, Danielle enjoys sharing this passion for data with current and future child life specialists to encourage the use of data to prove the effectiveness of child life interventions.

Kristen received a BS degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in Education focusing on Recreation Therapy, and her M.Ed from the University of Missouri in Information Science and Learning Technologies. She has been a dually certified CCLS and CTRS for over 20 years, spending the majority of her career at Stanford Children’s Health, covering Oncology/ Stem Cell Transplant, Cardiac Surgery/ Transplant, and the Pediatric Emergency Department. Kristen currently works at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco working as a Child Life Specialist III / Student Program Coordinator.

Amy Olson, MA, CCLS, has been a certified child life specialist at Mayo for 13+ years. Amy graduated from Marquette University with a B.A. in Criminology and Legal Studies, and a Master’s in Arts and Communication in Education and Child Development from St. Mary’s University in Winona, MN. She began her career at Mayo Clinic by starting the child life program at the Ronald McDonald House, Rochester, MN. Amy then transitioned to the inpatient setting, where she followed patients in General Pediatrics and in the PICU and CVICU. In late October, 2018, Amy transitioned to Radiology at St. Mary’s. Mrs. Olson is currently an instructor at University of California Santa Barbara, teaching a variety of child life theory and child development courses.