Episodes

22 years ago the United States of America experienced the worst terrorist attack in American history. The attacks on the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania took the lives of over 3,000 Americans and injured countless more who still live with the effects of both their visible and invisible injuries today. As a 9/11 survivor, program host Chris Meek pays reverence to the men and women in uniform who worked tireless...

Rochelle Keyhan is the Chief Executive Officer of Collective Liberty, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit committed to eliminating human trafficking. She joins the Next Steps Forward audience to speak about how she develops and executes the organization’s strategic direction and collaborations focused on disrupting specific types of human trafficking. She was formerly the Director of Disruption Strategies at Polaris, the nonprofit organization that operates the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hot...

Stephanie C. Hill is executive vice president of Rotary and Mission Systems (RMS) for Lockheed Martin Corporation, a $16 billion enterprise employing 35,000 people across the globe. She’s also a vocal advocate for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and a role model for mentorship in the workplace. She joins program host Chris Meek on this edition of Next Steps Forward to discuss her deep commitment to mentoring others and what planted that seed of commitment, her continue...

Chris Meek welcomes Tom Sterner to Next Steps Forward. Tom is best known as the founder and CEO of the Practicing Mind Institute. In addition to those roles, he is a successful entrepreneur, an expert in Present Moment Functioning, and an in-demand speaker who works with industry groups and high-performance individuals, including athletes, to help them operate effectively in high-stress situations so that they can achieve new levels of mastery. He has brought clarity to thousands so they can acc...

On this installment of Next Steps Forward, Dr. Elizabeth Anderson-Fletcher and Jeff Dill join program host Chris Meek. Dr. Elizabeth Anderson-Fletcher is Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management in the Department of Decision and Information Sciences in the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, with a joint faculty appointment in the Hobby School of Public Affairs. She is Faculty Director of Bauer Honors, Director of Accreditation in the Hobby School, and Associate Di...

This week's guest on Next Steps Forward is Michael Koslow. Michael Koslow joined the U.S. Air Force at the age of 17, rising through the ranks and working in counterintelligence to safeguard our national security. He retired from military service after 33 years and his path led him to the Department of Defense Inspector General's office. He broadened his perspective as a special investigations regional manager for a leading healthcare industry organization. He holds a B.A. in criminal justice, a...

This week’s guest on Next Steps Forward is Jenn Granneman. Jenn is the founder of Introvert, Dear and the co-founder of Sensitive Refuge. An educator and a journalist, she is the co-author of a fascinating, and even groundbreaking, new book, Sensitive. She’s also the author of The Secret Lives of Introverts. Jenn has been featured in The New York Times and Washington Post, by the BBC, Oprah Daily, Buzzfeed, Glamour, HuffPost, and more, as well as numerous podcasts. She hosts her own podcast call...

Julie Scelfo is the Founder and Executive Director of Get Media Savvy, a nonprofit using pop culture to establish a healthy media environment for kids and families. She joins Next Steps Forward host Chris Meek to discuss the mission, goals and outcomes of her organization, as well as how exactly to create a healthy media environment for children. Julie will provide background about how her experience as an award-winning journalist, which included serving as a staff writer at the New York Times, ...

In her memoir, The Fine Art of Camouflage, Lauren Kay Johnson tells a coming-of-age narrative against a backdrop of war wherein both her mother’s and her own service are explored. Lauren focuses on in-depth questions of war, the military, the role of information in war and in interpersonal relationships and her own family history in the memoir, as well as throughout her appearance on Next Steps Forward. Ultimately, she wrestles with the truth in the stories we read and hear from the media and of...

Next Steps Forward is focused on resiliency, leadership, personal empowerment and wellbeing. There are very few people who personify and epitomize all of those qualities more than this week’s guest, Breanna Cole. She is an outreach advocate at Selah Freedom, a faith-based nonprofit anti-human trafficking organization, based in Florida and the Midwest, with the mission to end sex trafficking and bring freedom to the exploited through five strong programs: Awareness, Prevention, Outreach, Resident...

James Dudley joins this episode of Next Steps Forward. Jim Dudley has extensive experience as a practitioner in law enforcement and criminal justice in San Francisco. A 32-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department, he has served in the ranks as a patrol officer, Sergeant, Inspector, Lieutenant, Captain, Commander and Deputy Chief. He served in all bureaus including Airport, Administration, Special Operations, Homeland Security, Investigations and Patrol Operations. He holds a Master of...

The war against sex trafficking and exploitation of children by predators who prey on them for profit or their own gratification may be the most important human rights battle of our time. This week’s conversation on Next Steps Forward is with someone on the front lines of that struggle. Stacey Efaw is the executive director of Selah Freedom. Stacey grew up in a military family. She lived in the Tampa Bay area in the 1980s when her family was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base. She earned her ba...

Burke Bryant is an esteemed author, public speaker, and humanitarian whose life-saving contributions have garnered widespread recognition, including the prestigious Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy, where he served as an operations specialist, and possesses a diverse skill set that includes combat search and rescue, tactical combat casualty care and diving instruction. In 2016, Bryant founded the Humanitarian Aid and Rescue Project, where he currently ser...

Christy Warren, a retired fire captain from the Berkeley Fire Department in California and host of The Firefighter Deconstructed, walks the audience through a firefighter’s journey through PTSD on this week’s episode of Next Steps Forward. She has twenty-five years of service as a professional paramedic and eighteen years as a professional firefighter/paramedic. After being diagnosed with PTSD in 2014, she retired from the fire service. Since then, she has become a triathlete, completed the Esca...

Dr. Stephany Powell provides a unique insight into the world of sexual exploitation and trafficking throughout her appearance on Next Steps Forward, which she gained from her thirty years with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). This experience, coupled with her passion for education and heart for community, make Dr. Powell an incredible leader in the movement to end sexual exploitation and as the Vice President and Director of Law Enforcement Training and Survivor Services at the National...

This week’s guest on Next Steps Forward is someone who program host Chris Meek has respected and admired for a long, long time. Chad Hennings believes that in order to achieve a legacy of excellence, one must live a life of integrity and purpose. In his words, “Excellence isn’t a destination; it’s an identity.” Chad Hennings has lived this message through a nine-year NFL career and three Super Bowl Championships with the Dallas Cowboys, forty-five NFL career combat missions as a U.S. Air Force p...

The focus of this week’s installment of Next Steps Forward is first responders and mental health and program host Chris Meek is excited to welcome Dr. Jena Casas, an expert on the subject matter. Dr. Casas is a licensed clinical psychologist who owns and operates a private practice and a consulting firm in northern Nevada. She holds a master’s degree in Criminal Justice and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno. She’s also a certified emergency responder and public saf...

This week’s guest on Next Steps Forward is Alina Donahue, a human trafficking subject matter expert and survivor. She co-created the Shelly Stayer Shelter’s 18-month Human Trafficking Residential Program, a nationally recognized residential program for adult female survivors of sexual human trafficking. She has been certified by the Florida Crime Prevention Training Institute through the Office of the Florida Attorney General. Alina was a mentor and teacher for Project Recovery, a program that h...

Nick Stefanizzi is the Chief Executive Officer of Northwell Health’s direct-to-employer organization, Northwell Direct, which supports businesses through a full spectrum of customized employer health services. Next Steps Forward host Chris Meek is excited to welcome him to the program due, in part, to his work on a mental wellness collaboration between Northwell Direct and the New York Police Department called Finest Care that was launched in July 2022. Throughout the conversation, Nick will spe...

As a boy, John Alite was born into a life of organized crime which led him to serve as the top hitman for John Gotti and the Gambino Crime Family. But living a life of crime came with many dangers and pitfalls, which eventually prompted John to realize there was a better path forward and ultimately inspired him to move on from his regretful past. Now he shares his story with the Next Steps Forward audience in the hopes of teaching others how they can take control of their futures, choose to be t...

Dr. Anna Courie leads AT&T’s commitment to First Responder Health and Wellness. Joining the team in May 2020, Dr.

Dr. Rachel Turow is a psychotherapist, research scientist, mindfulness and compassion teacher, and an adjunct faculty member at Seattle University and at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She joins program host Chris Meek to discuss her work exploring the connections among attention, self-criticism, stressful life experiences, and mental health. Over the years, Dr. Turow noted that many of the strategies that help trauma survivors can also build emotional resilience more generally. Af...

Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, a cardiologist who trained at Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins and practices in Minneapolis, Minnesota, joins Chris Meek for another installment of Next Steps Forward. She’s the author of the book “Slay the Giant: The Power of Prevention in Defeating Heart Disease” and founder of One Step Foods, a company dedicated to helping patients minimize their dependence on medications through strategic dietary change. During an hour focused entirely on health, Dr. Klodas shares with the...

Brian Searcy is the President of The Paratus Group. Founded in 2019, the organization’s objective is to use Brian's decades-tested and proven leadership and training experience to solve a need for relevant, effective, trustworthy principles, training methodologies and programs to allow for the learning of situational awareness. The situational awareness mindset and behaviors that are developed allows critical decisions to be made in the complex dynamics of the home, schools, the workplace and ou...