October 22, 2024
7:30 am - 9:00 am
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Get excited for an empowering morning celebrating advocates and the role they play in uplifting children across NYC.
Get excited for an empowering morning celebrating advocates and the role they play in uplifting children across NYC.
Join us for CCC’s Annual Celebration Breakfast on Tuesday, October 22, 2024 beginning at 7:30am. This year’s breakfast will take place in-person at 583 Park Ave and will honor inspiring advocates working to uplift child and family well-being in NYC, including Richard R. Buery, Jr., CEO, Robin Hood; CCC Board Member Constance Christensen; and The Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids Youth and Caregiver Council. The event will also feature keynote speaker Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker staff writer, whose recently published book, Everyone Who is Gone is Here, is “an epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate.” We previously honored Blitzer with a Samuel Peabody Award for his work in The New Yorker.
Jonathan Blitzer is an author whose prolific and poignant storytelling has shed much-needed light on the immigration crisis in the United States and the impact of US foreign policies on the lives of children and families. His 2024 book, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, chronicles the humanitarian crisis at the southern border and elevates the voices of migrants in ways that Americans and government leaders can’t ignore. A long-time staff writer at the New Yorker, Blitzer’s work has also appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Oxford American, and The Nation.
Jonathan Blitzer has won a National Award for Education Reporting for American Studies, a story about an underground school for undocumented immigrants. He has been a finalist three times for a Livingston Award, was the recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award and the 2018 Immigration Journalism Award, as well as a 2021 Emerson Fellow at New America. In addition, CCC honored Jonathan Blitzer at our 2018 Celebration Breakfast with the Samuel P. Peabody Award for Journalism in recognition of his reporting of the immigration crisis and the shameful and immoral separation of children from their parents at the border.
Honoring
Honoring
Honoring
Bremond Berry MacDougall
Carolyn Minick Mason
Jane Blair Oberle & Christian Oberle
Nancy & David Solomon
Heidi Stamas
Susan Wasserstein & George Sard
Learn more about the 2024 Honorees!
CEO, Robin Hood
Vanguard Award
A first-generation, Panamanian-American born and raised in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, Richard R. Buery, Jr. has spent his career fighting to advance equal opportunities for families and communities often left behind. At just 16 years old, Richard graduated from Stuyvesant High School and attended Harvard. He later earned a law degree from Yale.
His impressive tenure includes a range of work in city government, including serving as Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives for the City of New York; launching Schools Out NYC and ThriveNYC; managing a range of city agencies; and creating the NYC Children’s Cabinet, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women Business Enterprises. Richard has also led four major nonprofits that are among Robin Hood’s grantees: the Brennan Center at NYU’s School of Law, KIPP, Children’s Aid, and Achievement First. In September 2021, Richard became the CEO of Robin Hood, one of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizations.
Richard has extensive experience as a leader, manager, and social innovator within local government, as well as New York’s vast social service nonprofit sector. A husband and father, Richard lives in Manhattan with his wife Deborah and their two sons.
CCC has seen major success in our advocacy thanks to Robin Hood’s contributions to our participatory research projects and collaborative policy approaches to combat poverty and support NYC families. Read Richard’s full bio on Robin Hood’s website here.
CCC Board Member
Eleanor Roosevelt Award
Constance Christensen has been a steadfast champion for CCC’s research, civic engagement and advocacy for the past three decades, playing a fundamental role in the success of our annual benefits and serving in a variety of CCC board leadership roles including Treasurer from 2006 to 2010 and President from 2021 to 2022. Constance played an instrumental role in helping the organization weather the economic repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. She has supported the expansion of the organization’s research and advocacy teams and the re-envisioning of our community engagement programs, and in doing so has bolstered the organization’s efforts to produce first-in-class data analysis and participatory research, achieve budget and legislative victories, and create a more robust and inclusive community of advocates.
Beyond CCC, Constance’s lifetime of service and philanthropic commitment has helped to create a more just and culturally vibrant city with a presence on boards such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Theater for a New Audience, the Brooklyn Hospital Center, and as the former Commissioner of the NYC Art Commission, now the NYC Design Commission.
Samuel P. Peabody Award
The Campaign for Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids (HMHK) is a coalition of behavioral health (mental health and substance use) providers, advocates, and families that seek to create the public and political will needed to ensure that all children and adolescents in New York receive the high-quality behavioral health services they need. The HMHK Youth & Caregivers Council is the Campaign’s foundation for intergenerational, community-driven advocacy.
The council consists of New Yorkers who have experience with mental/behavioral health issues, are familiar with the needs of children and youth, and are passionate advocates for ensuring our communities thrive. The council works with the campaign to directly shape advocacy priorities that address issues based on their experience and deep knowledge of factors impacting the mental health of young people and their communities. The council’s work has directly shaped CCC’s advocacy around budget and legislative decision making at the state level.
On behalf of the Council, the Council’s four impressive and dedicated elected Leaders will be accepting the award: Mashrafi Nur Anwar, Aprecia “Preem” Cabey, Mary Holiman, and Diane Tanner.
Mashrafi Nur Anwar is a Bangladeshi-American currently pursuing his Master of Social Work degree at Columbia University under an Advanced standing Pathway and is one of the current youth council leaders for HMHK. He is a graduate of the NYU Silver School of Social Work with a BSW degree majoring in Social Work and minoring in Child & Adolescent Mental Health Studies. Mashrafi is currently a CPST and PSR service worker for the New York Youth Support Program.
Aprecia “Preem” Cabey is a social and environmental justice activist currently residing in the Capital Region of New York State. She is a graduate of the SUNY Albany Emerging Nonprofit leadership accelerator and a former climate justice fellow for NYSERDA. Preem also serves as a board member and policy maker with many boards in the City of Albany.
Mary Holiman received her Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Psychology and Criminology from Johnson C. Smith University. She obtained her Master’s in Public Health in Community Health Science and Practice from New York University. Mary has experience within the public school system teaching violence and substance misuse prevention, along with social and emotional regulation skills to K-12th grades. She currently works for Rise, an organization for parents impacted by the child welfare system, by parents impacted.
Diane Tanner is a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother living in Rochester. She advocates for The Children Agenda, serves on a group forum for Monroe County Office of Mental Health/Substance Abuse, and is a service navigator for BIPOC PEEEEEEK which stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Parents and Caregivers Elevating their voices to Educate and Empower Each other to Eliminate disparities in services related to the Emotional Health of our Kids. Diane is also a Family Peer Advocate (FPA-P) credentialed by New York State.