KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

GENERAL SESSION SPEAKERS FOR THE 2017 SAFE SCHOOLS CONFERENCE INCLUDE:

JULY 19, 2017 – Dr. James Maciel: UCLA Medical Center Surgeon

Two very different documents define James Maciel's unusual life journey.

The older one is a photocopy of his court records from the late '90s, showing arrests for graffiti vandalism and possession of a handgun that landed him in Orange County Juvenile Hall and the Youth Guidance Center for six months.

The other document is his new UCLA medical diploma, earned at the relatively late age of 33 while he and his wife were raising their three children. The diploma is a passport to Maciel's upcoming residency in surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, the Carson hospital that serves many low-income people and immigrants and is among the busiest in the state in treating gunshot wounds.

"The people I lived with and grew up with are the people I want to take care of. The indigent and the gang members," Maciel, who grew up in Santa Ana and now lives in Garden Grove, said in an interview. "It's just a natural fit for me."

JULY 20, 2017 – Oz Sanchez: USA Olympic Medalist

“There is nothing you can’t accomplish, when you Know No Limits” - Oz Sanchez

“Know No Limits”… these three words have grown to weave themselves throughout this individual's life and have come to define his transformation from a broken man into an elite athlete, mentor and inspiration, to both ‘physically challenged’ and ‘able-bodied’ people alike.

Oz has represented his country in two of the most honorable ways - first as a Marine and now as a 3x Paralympic medalist.

Achieving successful change inevitably means overcoming obstacles. Oz tells his inspirational story first hand of how he faced and successfully overcame adversity. His story is one of success and inspiration.

JULY 21, 2017 – Father Greg Boyle: Founder Homeboy Industries

"You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done" -Greg Boyle

From 1986 to 1992, Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East LA, then the poorest Catholic parish in the city, located between two large public housing projects with the highest concentration of gang activity in Los Angeles. He witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during what he has called “the decade of death” that began in the late 1980s. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, Father Boyle and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings.

By 1988, they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, now the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Homeboy employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to 15,000 men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.

Father Greg Boyle - Keynote Speaker - July 21

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