ADAO Hybrid 17th Annual International Asbestos Awareness and Prevention Conference
“Where Knowledge and Action Unite”
September 16-17, 2022

2022 Conference Info | Registration | Agenda | Speakers | Friday “Asbestos: Art, Advocacy, and Action” Festival | Saturday Academic Conference | Saturday Honorees and Keynote Speaker | Sponsors  Meet the Speakers Blog Series | Conference Video Library 2006-2021|

17th Asbestos Awareness and Prevention Conference Agenda
Meet the Speakers Blog Series Landing Page

AGENDA 

 

The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) is proud to present the weekly series “Meet the Speakers and Honorees,” which will highlight esteemed participants of our highly anticipated 17th Annual International Asbestos Awareness & Prevention Conference! The conference, which will take place virtually on September 16-17th, 2022, combines expert opinions, victims’ stories, and new technological advancements from nearly 10 countries across the globe into one united voice raising awareness about asbestos. ADAO is the only U.S. nonprofit that organizes annual conferences dedicated solely to preventing asbestos exposure and eliminating asbestos-caused diseases.

The Friday “Asbestos: Art, Advocacy, and Action Festival” will feature esteemed and talented artists and advocates from around the world. The festival will be live-streamed globally from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm ET on Friday, Sept. 16th. 

*Remote

Friday “Asbestos: Art, Advocacy, and Action Festival” Artists and Presenters: Kathy Best: Andrew Schneider Memorial Lecture Introduction
David Boraks: Andrew Schneider Memorial Lecture
Jill Cagle: Musical Performance *
Kim Cecchini: Candle Lighting
Ellen Costa: Morning Moderator
John Curtis: Political Cartoonist *
Earl Dotter: Photojournalist *
Fernanda Giannassi (ABREA) and Inácio Teixeira *: Photographer and Filmmaker
Eric Jonckheere: Author *
Lee Loftus: WorkSafeBC *
Barbara Minty McQueen: Photographer, Mesothelioma Widow *
Linda Reinstein: Moderator 

Presenter Bios

Kathy Best: After four decades writing and editing stories designed to make a difference in readers’ lives, Kathy Best moved to academia in June 2019 to train the next generation of investigative reporters as the inaugural director of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland. The center’s first project on the impact of global warming on the urban poor, a collaboration with NPR, won three national awards in professional contests. Students in the center have gone on to win national awards for coverage of homelessness, the failure to protect legal migrant workers during the pandemic and the role of white-owned newspapers across the U.S. in inciting lynchings and racial terror during the Jim Crow era. Best was previously the executive editor of The Seattle Times, which she helped lead to two Pulitzer Prizes. She was also the editor of the Missoulian in Missoula, Montana, and a top editor at The Sun in Baltimore, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She met her late husband, Andrew Schneider, while working in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau covering Congress and national politics. Andrew’s work inspired her to lead the Howard Center to make sure journalism has more reporters who know how to dig deeply and watch out for those without power.

 

David Boraks covers climate change, energy and the environment for WFAE, the NPR affiliate in Charlotte. At WFAE since 2016, he also has covered housing and homelessness, government, transportation, and business. He also occasionally hosts WFAE’s news and talk shows. His project “Asbestos Town” was named Best Radio Documentary by the Society of Professional Journalists in 2022. David formerly published the online news network DavidsonNews.net and CorneliusNews.net near Charlotte. He has been an editor and reporter at The Charlotte Observer, American Banker, The China News in Taipei, The Cambridge (Mass.) Chronicle, and The Hartford Courant, among others. He was the Batten Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College in 2013 and has a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and master’s degree from Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. 

 

Jill Cagle is a performer and Mesothelioma Widow. She is the surviving spouse of Mesothelioma Warrior Robbie Cagle, who lost his 6-year battle with Peritoneal Mesothelioma on 9-11-11 at the age of 46. She is a mother and now grandmother of 3. She is a Christian and her faith in God truly sustains her.  She is the lead singer in the Band Backstreet and plays the Fiddle. She makes primitive crafts and candles and she loves to ride her Harley and feel the wind in her hair. She has been associated with ADAO since 2007 and has now started an annual Motorcycle Ride, “Ridin the Wind with Rob”; which includes a 110-mile ride, dinner, silent auction, raffles and t-shirt sales to raise funds for awareness and ultimately a CURE of Mesothelioma. Jill and Rob marched on Capitol Hill in 2010 to help get Illinois to sign the National Asbestos Awareness Day Bill and also met with the DOD. She is committed to doing whatever it takes to get this killer 100 % banned. She is truly honored and proud to be a part of this organization.

Kim Cecchini, ADAO Board Member, has been involved with the organization since its founding in 2004. She is a senior communications strategist, with more than 25 years of experience managing diverse PR and corporate communications programs for a wide variety of high growth companies, specializing in technology and the federal sector. She currently resides in Raleigh, NC.

Ellen Costa is an ADAO Board Member and volunteer.  She has been with ADAO since 2012 and is honored to be of service to this very special organization; its mission, founders and supporters. Professionally, she has been in the financial services industry for over 30 years and has served various firms in marketing, communications, product management, strategic planning and regulatory policy impacts.. Inspired by Linda Reinstein’s commitment and passion in making change, influencing political policy and advocating for practical issues on a global level, lead to her involvement with the organization. The awareness, family support and leadership ADAO provides in creating the change needed in this world is truly powerful. Most importantly, she believes in Linda Reinstein and is truly privileged to serve and support the mission of ADAO.

John Curtis is a South African social justice activist, writer, and editorial cartoonist, now based in the United Kingdom. After debuting in 2005 as daily cartoonist for Cape Town’s Cape Argus newspaper, John has since carved out a niche for himself as a collaborator with many of South Africa’s leading cartoonists wherein he conceptualizes ideas which they draw. He has won two Sikuvile Journalism Awards (his nation’s top award for cartooning) amongst many other national and international accolades, and his work has been published across dozens of titles and appeared in exhibitions worldwide. In 2008, John founded Africartoons; an agency which recruits the talents of many of Africa’s top cartoonists to communicate messages for social justice causes, advocacy and public awareness campaigns. Africartoons has a following of over 1,2 million people on Facebook. John is also a creative director for digitalJUNGLE, a socially conscious design studio, which he partners with his wife Michelle.

Earl Dotter is the Photographer and Creator of the exhibit BADGES: A Memorial Tribute to Asbestos Workers. Earl began photographing coal miners in 1969, then the most dangerous job in America. After which, he focused on other hazardous occupations in the USA. After 30 years of documentation he created the exhibit and book, THE QUIET SICKNESS: A Photographic Chronicle of Hazardous Work in America. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health since his appointment in 1999. In the year 2000, Dotter received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to document commercial fishing. It had become our nation’s most dangerous trade. After 9/11, he photographed the rescue recovery effort at Ground Zero. For that exhibit project he received APHA’s Alice Hamilton Award. Currently, Dotter is currently touring his retrospective exhibit, LIFE’S WORK, A Fifty Year Photographic Chronicle of Working in the U.S.A. His recently published book of the same name is a companion to the touring exhibit.

Fernanda Giannasi is a Civil and Occupational Safety Engineer and was a Labor Inspector for 30 years at the Brazilian Labor Ministry, in the inspection of health and safety conditions at the workplaces with emphasis on the insalubrity, lethality and dangerousness of carcinogenic agents (asbestos, nuclear, silica) and other toxic substances such as POPs – Persistent Organic Pollutants mercury, among others. She founded the GIA-Grupo Interinstitutional of Asbestos and was manager of the State Program for the Banning of Asbestos. Currently retired, she is a health, labor and environmental consultant for workers’ organizations and victims of industrial processes. She founded the Brazilian Association of People Exposed to Asbestos (ABREA) and was one of the creators of the CONTREN-National Commission of the Workers on Nuclear Energy, which was involved with a relevant role during all antinuclear activities at Rio/92 (UNCED). She also coordinates the Virtual-Citizen Network for the Banning of Asbestos for Latin America and is a member of the Brazilian Environmental Justice Network. She was the vice-coordinator of the CEA-Committee for Asbestos Studies, which regulated the 162 ILO Convention to deal with the protection of workers exposed to asbestos. She is part of the Italian Academy of Sciences of the Work World (Collegium Ramazzini), which awarded her the Ramazzini Prize in November 2018. Her struggle has been recognized for several times receiving awards, including the Occupational Health of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Chicago/1999; the title of “Anti-Asbestos G-Woman in Tokyo in 2004 and the Rachel LEE Jung-Lim Award in 2017 in South Korea. She was recognized for her work in favor of citizenship by the National Progressist  Entrepreneurs Basis-PNBE, which awarded her as an Outstanding Citizen in 2001; she was also the winner of the Claudia 2001, which annually awards projects that contribute to improving the quality of life developed by women, as well the Personality in Engineering in 2012 and in 2018 received the 2017 FazDiferença (Makes the Difference) Prize from the prestigious Newspaper “O Globo. She also received commendations from the Order of Judicial Merit of Labor from the TST-Superior Labor Court (2014) and from the TRT-Regional Labor Court (2015).

Eric Jonckheere is a Belgian airline pilot. Asbestos is part of his everyday environment since 1937. His grand-father Paul was a key player in keeping the Eternit factories open during WW2. Pierre, his father, worked at Eternit as an engineer. He grew up in Kapelle, north of Brussels. It was paradise until the passing of Pierre due to mesothelioma in 1987. He was 59. Then his mother, Francoise, and brothers, Pierre-Paul and Stephane, suffered from the same cancer, respectively in 2000, 2003 and 2010. He became an anti-asbestos activist when he realized many families couldn’t speak up. The entire village suffers from extensive environmental exposure but the local politicians and union leaders are at the mercy of the plants owners.  Since their victory in the Brussels court, they have moved the case-law and the knowledge of the dangers of asbestos to the general public. As president of ABEVA, it’s important to share experiences across borders. 

Lee Loftus has 48 years of experience in the B.C. Construction sector as an insulator/asbestos worker. He has extensive governance experience as a labour leader with the BC Federation of Labour, BC Building Trades, and BC Insulators Union. Is currently the Vice Chair of WorkSafeBC (Workers Compensation Board) as a Public Interest appointee. He is a former member of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety; Director of the Canadian Standards Association, and Canadian Society of Safety Engineering; and administrator of the Insulation Industry Apprenticeship Board. He is active on not-for-profit boards with a focus on mental health, medical research, essential skills, climate research, and literacy. 

Barbara Minty McQueen is the widow of American film star Steve McQueen, and is a former model and photographer. She is also the author of Steve McQueen: The Last Mile, which documents the three-and-a-half-year relationship between the two and includes candid photographs from 1977 to 1980. McQueen has hosted several art exhibits of her work with shows in London, Tokyo, San Francisco, Nashville, Phoenix and Idaho, where she resides.

Christine Oliver, MD, PhD, MPH, MSc is an adjunct professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Health in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto in Toronto, ON. She is a consultant to Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW). Dr. Oliver has an occupational and environmental medicine consulting practice in Brookline, MA. She was formerly an associate clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Department of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Division) at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Oliver’s primary specialty is occupational and environmental medicine, with an emphasis on occupational lung disease. Dr. Oliver is a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini and has done research and published in the area of occupational lung disease, with a focus on asbestos-related disease. She has lectured frequently on this topic, including more recently the determination of risk for asbestos-related lung cancer. Dr. Oliver has testified before Congress and OSHA on issues related to asbestos and other workplace exposures. She has also testified as a medical expert on behalf and at the request of asbestos victims and their families.

Linda Reinstein is the President/CEO and Co-Founder of Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO). Reinstein became an activist when her husband, Alan, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2003. She co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization in 2004, and now serves as President and CEO.  Reinstein has been a strong political voice for justice in every major asbestos-related issue. Reinstein, a highly sought-after international speaker, has frequently served as a Congressional witness and presented at the Department of Labor (OSHA), British House of Commons, United Nations Congress, American Public Health Association, and to other audiences around the world. Recognized as an expert with nearly 40 years of nonprofit experience in building and sustaining grassroots organizations, Reinstein specializes in developing, implementing, and leveraging integrated social media campaigns. Focused on national and international occupational and environmental disease prevention, Reinstein’s proficiency in the powerful advocacy space of online media has greatly increased the effectiveness of ADAO’s core mission of education, advocacy, and community support actions. She has won many prestigious awards including the Global Impact Award (2013), from the Independent Asbestos Training Providers; Bruce Vento Hope Builder Award (2011), from the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation; the highest level of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award for her 4,000 hours of volunteerism during her lifetime (2010); and the Heart and Soul Award in from the Manhattan Beach Women in Business Association (2005). Recently, after months of collaboration with experts in the U.S. and Australia, Reinstein spearheaded the launch of a new website, “Know Asbestos”, to educate about the dangers of asbestos exposure and prevention.

Inácio Teixeira is son of a former worker from SAMA (currently Eternit) and was born at the Workers Village of Bom Jesus da Serra, Southwest of Bahia state, the first asbestos mining explored in Brazil (1939-1967). His late brother, Esmeraldo Teixeira (Nego), founded AVICAFE, local asbestos victims, who was a victim of asbestos exposure since when he was a little boy. When SAMA closed the site and transferred its dirty and dangerous production, Inácio worked at the new asbestos mine for almost 30 months. After this he moved to São Paulo, where he became a photographer, specialized in photojournalism and continued to fight against asbestos and to seek social and environmental reparation for the population exposed. Currently he is the President of AVICAFE.