 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(June 2014) |
Terrie Williams | |
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| Born | May 12, 1954 Mount Vernon, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Brandeis University (BA) Columbia University School of Social Work (MS) |
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Terrie Williams (born May 12, 1954) is an American public relations speaker, author, therapist, and philanthropist.[ citation needed ]
Williams was born to parents Charles and Marie. Charles, one of five siblings, was educated in the military. Marie, the only one among her nine siblings to complete high school. [1]
Williams, after completing her high school, continued her education at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts where she received a BA in Psychology and Sociology. She received an Alumni Achievement Award in 1988. [2] Upon completion of her bachelor's degree, she went on to obtain a Master's of Science in Social Work at Columbia University. [3]
After completing her MS degree, Williams worked as a medical social worker at New York Hospital (now called Weill-Cornell Medical Center) counselling terminally ill and disabled patients. Later, she met and befriended jazz musician Miles Davis, who encouraged her to open her own business. [4]
The Terrie Williams Agency (TTWA), founded in 1988 by Terrie Williams, is a public relations firm. [5] In start, it represented Miles Davis and Eddie Murphy, TTWA expanded to offer employee training and motivational speaking for various organizations. The agency's clientele includes figures such as Prince, Chris Rock, Janet Jackson, Louis Gossett Jr., Al Sharpton, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Mo'Nique, Ntozake Shange, and Johnnie L. Cochran. Corporate clients have included HBO, Revlon, Time Warner, Essence magazine, and Forest City Ratner Companies. [6]
Her work in public relations has been referenced in textbooks, [7] [8] business guides, [9] [10] print editorials, [11] social media, and pop culture. [12] [13] From its creation in 1988 to closure in 2018, the public relations firm provided many services on a pro bono basis to underserved communities. [6]
In 2003, Williams suffered from severe depression that impacted her public relations career. [14] She publicly discussed this in a 2005 Essence magazine interview, emphasizing the stigma around mental health treatment in the African-American community. [15] Transitioning into a mental health advocate, Williams spoke nationally to encourage open conversations on mental health issues. She wrote a book, Black Pain, in 2009 that is focused on mental health challenges in the black community. [16]
Williams has written four books. Her first, The Personal Touch: What You Really Need to Succeed in Today's Fast-paced Business World [17] offered "an excellent primer on the basics of building and maintaining business relationships." [18] The second book, Stay Strong: Simple Life Lessons for Teens [19] formed the basis of Williams' non-profit Stay Strong Foundation. A Plentiful Harvest: Creating Balance and Harmony Through the Seven Living Virtues, [4] offers advice on how to insert core values into business practices. In 2008, she wrote Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting, [20] which examines the role of unaddressed mental and emotional illness in spreading physical disease, substance abuse, violent crime, and broken families among African Americans.
In 2005, Williams founded the Stay Strong Foundation (SSF)—now dissolved. SSF aimed to raise awareness of teen issues, promote the personal well-being of young people and enhance educational and professional development. The foundation encouraged corporate and individual responsibility, developed educational resources for youth and youth organizations, provided and coordinated internships, set up mentoring opportunities, and facilitated visits by prominent individuals and business professionals to schools, libraries, youth organizations, and group homes.
In March 2008, the Stay Strong Foundation launched the "Healing Starts With Us" campaign. [21] [22] In 2010 SSF collaborated with the Ad Council and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to introduce a campaign entitled "Share Ourselves: Healing Starts With Us." [23] To date, the campaign has garnered $2.5 million in donated national advertising space and 11 million media impressions to significantly heighten awareness of the importance of mental and emotional health.
In October 2012, Williams was a featured speaker on mental health for World Mental Health Day. [24]
Brandeis University is a private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1948 as a non-sectarian, coeducational institution sponsored by the Jewish community, Brandeis was established on the site of the former Middlesex University. The university is named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Edwin Fuller Torrey, is an American psychiatrist and schizophrenia researcher. He is associate director of research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI) and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit organization whose principal activity is promoting the passage and implementation of outpatient commitment laws and civil commitment laws and standards in individual states that allow people diagnosed with severe mental illness to be involuntarily hospitalized and treated throughout the United States.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is a United States-based nonprofit organization originally founded as a grassroots group by family members of people diagnosed with mental illness. NAMI identifies its mission as "providing advocacy, education, support and public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental illness can build better lives" and its vision as "a world where all people affected by mental illness live healthy, fulfilling lives supported by a community that cares". NAMI offers classes and trainings for people living with mental illnesses, their families, community members, and professionals, including what is termed psychoeducation, or education about mental illness. NAMI holds regular events which combine fundraising for the organization and education, including Mental Illness Awareness Week and NAMIWalks.
MindFreedom International is an international coalition of over one hundred grassroots groups and thousands of individual members from fourteen nations. Based in the United States, it was founded in 1990 to advocate against forced medication, medical restraints, and involuntary electroconvulsive therapy. Its stated mission is to protect the rights of people who have been labeled with psychiatric disorders. Membership is open to anyone who supports human rights, including mental health professionals, advocates, activists, and family members. MindFreedom has been recognized by the United Nations Economic and Social Council as a human rights NGO with Consultative Roster Status.
Bebe Moore Campbell was an American author, journalist and teacher. Campbell was the author of three New York Times bestsellers: Brothers and Sisters, Singing in the Comeback Choir, and What You Owe Me, which was also a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of 2001". Her other works include the novel Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the NAACP Image Award for Literature; her memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad; and her first nonfiction book, Successful Women, Angry Men: Backlash in the Two-Career Marriage. Her essays, articles, and excerpts appear in many anthologies.
Bill Lichtenstein is an American print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer, president of the media production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media, Incorporated.
Margaret Ann Williams is a former director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and is a partner in Griffin Williams, a management-consulting firm.
Marita Golden is an American novelist, nonfiction writer, professor, and co-founder of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, a national organization that serves as a resource center for African-American writers.
Rachel Noerdlinger is an American publicist and longtime communications advisor to National Action Network and national civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton. She served as chief of staff to New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray. After leaving public service, Noerdlinger became a managing director at Mercury Public Affairs.
Helene D. Gayle is an American physician, and academic and non-profit administrator. She has served as the president of Spelman College since 2023. She formerly served as CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation's leading community foundations. Earlier in her career she was the director of international humanitarian organization CARE, and worked in the field of public health programs at the CDC.
Amy Guidry is an American artist in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Eleanor Owen, also known as Eleanor DeVito, was an American journalist, playwright, university professor, costume designer, theatre actress, and mental health professional. She received statewide and national honors and awards for her advocacy work on behalf of families and individuals with mental illness. Serving as an advocate in Olympia, Washington, Owen participated in the introduction and successful passage of health and human services legislation.
Darlene Nipper is an American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights activist and the deputy executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force since 2008. She has previously worked for the city government of Washington, DC, the BET Foundation, the National Mental Health Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) - where she served as chief operating officer. She has been an "out and active lesbian who has been in a committed relationship [since 1996]."
Frederica M. Williams, MBA, FCIS has served as the president and chief executive officer of Whittier Street Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts since 2002.
Susan Jane Blumenthal is an American physician, global health expert, psychiatrist and public health advocate. With more than two decades of service as a senior government health leader in the administrations of four U.S. presidents, Blumenthal served as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women's Health and director of the Office on Women's Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States and senior global health advisor within the HHS. She also was a research branch chief at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the chair of the NIH Health and Behavior Coordinating Committee. As of 2016, she has served as the senior medical and policy advisor at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, a senior fellow in health policy at New America, and a clinical professor at Tufts and Georgetown Schools of Medicine. Blumenthal is the Public Health Editor of the Huffington Post. She is married to United States Senator Ed Markey.
Corvida Raven is an American writer, technological artist, entrepreneur and public speaker who lives and works out of New York City, New York. She has been garnering national attention since the age of 19 for her blog, shegeeks.net, and other projects aimed at making technological skills and information accessible to the public at large, and particularly to youth, people of colour, women and marginalized communities.
Belisa Vranich is an American clinical psychologist, author, public speaker, and founder of The Breathing Class (TM). She has been an active consultant and columnist, promoting intentional breathing practices to improve health and providing psychological viewpoints on sex and relationships. She is an advocate for women's health, as well as volunteering, mentorship, and animal rescue.
Dior Vargas is an American Latina feminist mental health activist and the instigator of a project focused on creating a community to eradicate the stigma of mental illness for people of color. She is based in her native New York City. She is currently the outreach coordinator for Project Urok, as well as serving as a crisis counselor for Crisis Text Line and a facilitator for the Young Adult Support Group at NAMI-NYC Metro.
Adia Harvey Wingfield is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and the 2018 President of Sociologists for Women in Society. She is the author of several books, including No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work, and articles in peer-reviewed journals including Social Problems, Gender & Society, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She has lectured internationally on her research.
Yolo Akili, also known as Yolo Akili Robinson, is an activist, writer, poet, counselor, and community organizer who advocates for addressing mental and emotional health needs in the Black community. He is the author of Dear Universe: Letters of Affirmation and Empowerment, and the founder and executive director of BEAM.
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