Presenter's Biographies
 Jeanette Belz opened her own business in Nevada in 2000. In addition to lobbying in Carson City, she diversified several years ago to offer mediation and facilitation services. Jeanette holds several certificates in mediation, including advanced and elder care mediation. She serves as a mediator with the Nevada Foreclosure Mediation Program administered by the Nevada Supreme Court. In her spare time, Jeanette enjoys promoting alternative dispute resolution. She volunteers at the Neighborhood Mediation Center in Reno and teaches high school students about “peer mediation.” She is also a member/volunteer with the Nevada Dispute Resolution Coalition. Her personal motto is “Seek to understand and then be understood.”
 Margaret M. Crowley is a 1987 graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno (B.A., With Distinction) and a 1991 graduate of the University of California, Davis School of Law (J.D.). For over 15 years, Margaret served as a Civil Deputy District Attorney for Washoe County, Nevada. During that time, she practiced in many areas, including labor/employment law, contract law, litigation and administrative law, and in multiple settings such as mediations, arbitrations, administrative hearings and state and federal courts. Margaret has extensive training and experience as a mediator. In addition to conducting private mediations, she is a Nevada Supreme Court Settlement Judge. She serves as a mediator for the Second Judicial District Court Family Mediation Panel; the Federal District Court Early Mediation Program for Pro Se Inmates; the Nevada Supreme Court Foreclosure Mediation Program; the Neighborhood Mediation Center, where she also provides program services and mentors new mediators, and the State Bar of Nevada Fee Dispute Committee. Margaret has served as a speaker on mediation for the National Judicial College, the Foreclosure Mediation Program and the Washoe County School District. Buffy Jo Dreiling Buffy Jo Dreiling a fifth generation Nevadan. Graduated from University of Nevada, Reno and then Lewis and Clark College, Northwestern School of Law. Licensed attorney in Nevada since 1995. Worked both in private practice and the District Attorney’s Office prior to becoming a Family Court Master. She has been a Family Court Master since 2005.
 Cheryl Demmert Fairbanks is a partner in the firm of Cuddy & McCarthy, LLP. Her practice concentrates in the areas of Indian Law, State-Tribal Relations, Indian Gaming, Tribal Courts, Mediation, Family, School, and Educational Law. Clint Holder Clint Holder, MSW, has worked in public child welfare for over 18 years, 7 of which are as a national consultant and trainer.Currently, he is a Senior Staff Associate with Action for Child Protection and the National Resource Center for Child Protective Services. His expertise is primarily related to safety intervention, which includes assessment and decision making, safety planning effectiveness, and sufficient on-going safety management. Mr. Holder has provided consultation and technical assistance in numerous states for the development and implementation of their safety intervention models. He has authored numerous professional practice and decision-making curricula; managed and conducted several statewide training projects and research case reviews to evaluate quality of practice. For the last 5 years, Mr. Holder has been involved with Nevada in developing and training the Nevada Initial Assessment (NIA) statewide. He is currently serving as the Implementation Director for the Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII), which is a 5-year Federal grant that was awarded to Washoe County, Nev., and ACTION for Child Protection. PII is a demonstration of an evidence based practice to safely reduce the number of children in long term foster care by using a safety management model
Robert G. Lewis, M.Ed., MSW, LICSW http://www.rglewis.com/RGLewis%20Site/index.html Bob Lewis, formerly Assistant Director and Director of the Massachusetts, Department of Public Welfare, Group Care Unit, is a consultant, an author and a strategic thinker who provides training and technical assistance to child welfare organizations. He focuses on the development of social work practices in permanency as well as policy and organizational development in support of permanency. Bob has a special interest and expertise in the area of life-long family connections for adolescents in the child welfare system. He has written training programs for social work supervisors to teach effective strategies for adolescent permanency and a workbook for supervisors and workers on how to locate families for teens.. Bob Lewis and Communities For People, Inc. developed a unique program for teens in group homes and independent living programs consisting of nine workshop sessions and five weekends with "practice" families. Since 2000, Bob Lewis has consulted extensively with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) on adolescent permanency. ACS adopted Adolescents and Families for Life for its agencies and staff that serve teens. Bob has also been doing workshops, consulting and working with several sites in California as well as in New York, MT, MN, KY and others. Bob is currently working on a video project with social workers, supervisors and programs directors from 6 agencies in 5 states to improve child welfare practice. They are drafting a protocol of questions to be captured on video which record a youth's own story, highlights his/her strengths and gives each of them a permanent voice currently missing in today's child welfare records. Dr. Melissa Piasecki, M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry at University of Nevada School of Medicine. She teaches and supervises medical students and residents at all levels. Dr. Piasecki completed a fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry at University of Hawaii and provides forensic psychiatry consultation and services. She is also faculty at the National Judicial College. Judge Stephen M. Rubin received his Bachelor of Arts in political science from Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan in 1971. His law degree was awarded in June 1975 from the Detroit College of Law, Detroit, Michigan. He was admitted to the Arizona Bar in April 1975. Prior to his appointment to the Bench, he was in private practice with the Law Offices of Rubin & Myers for twelve years. Judge Rubin was appointed to the Pima County Bench as a Judge Pro Tempore of the Superior Court, Juvenile Division effective July 1, 1987. He served in that capacity until 1995. In July 1995 he assumed duties as a Court Commissioner/Judge Pro Tempore of the Superior Court. Judge Rubin served in the Family Division of the Superior Court and the Criminal Division. In February 2001, Judge Rubin was reassigned to the Juvenile Bench. Judge Rubin retired from the bench effective April 30, 2010. He returned to the court on a half time basis for a year. Judge Rubin served for eight years as the lead or co- lead judge of the Pima County Victims Act Model Court Project. Judge Rubin served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University Of Arizona College Of Law, having written the curriculum for the first class devoted exclusively to Child Abuse and Neglect Law and Practice. He has served as faculty in numerous programs on both a local and national level. He is a co-creator of the Child Abuse and Neglect Institute offered annually by the NCJFCJ in Reno, NV. He served as chairman of the NCJFCJ Continuing Judicial Education Committee for many years. He served for five years as a trustee of the NCJFCJ. In July of 2002, Judge Rubin was elected as an officer. He served as President of the Council 2005-2006. Upon his retirement Judge Rubin established SMR, Consulting. He has provided consulting services to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Resource Center on Judicial and Legal Issues, the ABA and the State of Arizona. Judge Rubin has worked actively with the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Florida and Nevada assisting them in developing statewide best practice courts and training on Judicial Leadership.
Vivek S. Sankaran is a clinical assistant professor of law in the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and director of the new Detroit Center for Family Advocacy. Professor Sankaran's research and policy interests center on improving outcomes for children in child abuse and neglect cases by empowering parents and strengthening due process protections in the child welfare system. Professor Sankaran sits on the Steering Committee of the ABA National Project to Improve Representation for Parents Involved in the Child Welfare System and chairs the Michigan Court Improvement Project subcommittee on parent representation.He has also authored scholarly pieces and practical resource guides to assist professionals working with parents in the system and regularly conducts national and statewide training on these issues. Professor Sankaran earned his B.A. magna cum laude from the College of William and Mary. He earned his J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was an associate editor on the Michigan Law Review. After law school, he joined The Children's Law Center (CLC) as a Skadden Fellow and became a permanent staff attorney with the CLC in September 2003. Professor Sankaran was named the 2004 Michigan Law School Public Interest Alumni of the Year and in 2006, was certified as a child welfare specialist by the National Association of Counsel for Children. In 2008, he was appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court to represent Melanie Morgan, In re Hudson-Morgan, and in 2009, he was appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court to represent Billy Joe Hansen, In re Hansen. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Detroit Metropolitan Bar Foundation and is serving a three-year term with the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board.
Madelyn Shipman Madelyn Shipman has practiced law in northern Nevada since she moved here from Minnesota in 1982. Currently employed part-time at Laxalt-Nomura, Ltd., she retired from full-time public law practice in January 2005. Prior to her retirement, she was Assistant District Attorney and chief civil counsel to the Washoe County Commission. She has appeared before the 2nd Judicial District Court, the Nevada Supreme Court, the various Nevada federal courts and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in her various roles as counsel to the Nevada Department ofTransportation, the City of Reno and Washoe County. She received her B.A. degree from The American University, Washington, D.C., and her J.D. degree from Hamline University College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a Settlement Judge and Foreclosure Mediator for the Nevada Supreme Court, certified as an arbitrator by the First, Second and Ninth Judicial District Courts, and lobbied extensively for the entities by which she was employed and later for various private interests over fourteen sessions of the Nevada Legislature. Debbie "Sam" Smith Debbie "Sam" Smith began working directly and actively with families experiencing domestic violence since in 1983 when she participated in launching the "Child Assault Prevention Project." She then served as the family services director for a local domestic violence program and manager of the emergency shelter. Later, she directed the county protection order project and served as a domestic violence advocate and co-chaired, the Washoe County Adult Fatality Review Team. At the local domestic violence program, Sam also worked with survivors and their children in a transitional housing program and facilitated community support groups for battered women. From 1995-2005, Sam worked as an information specialist with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) Family Violence Department. In 2007, Sam bridged the efforts of her local child welfare agency and the domestic violence advocacy community by working as a domestic violence specialist. As the only specialist in Nevada housed within the child protection agency, Sam developed the local collaborative response to domestic violence survivors and their children involved with child services. In 2007, Sam returned to NCJFCJ to coordinate the Greenbook project, a federal inter-agency initiative that funded six communities across the country to implement the recommendations found in the NCJFCJ's publication Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence & Child Maltreatment Cases: Guidelines for Policy and Practice (Greenbook). During this time, Sam provided technical assistance to child welfare agencies, domestic violence agencies, and family courts to work together more effectively to help families that are experiencing violence.
Dr. Alex Stalcup, M.D. is a graduate of Whittier College and a graduate of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.
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