Keita Franklin, LCSW, PhD
Dr. Franklin is an accomplished senior executive who is widely credited with revolutionizing several large scale, national public health systems. She has focused her expertise in key wellness areas to include suicide prevention, mental health, and substance abuse. A transformational leader, Dr. Franklin has spent her 25-year career driving complex organizational and policy change in the federal sector before recently transitioning to the private sector. She has served as a senior executive in both the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), where she served as the principle advisor on all matters related to suicide prevention. As a national leader in the suicide prevention, Dr. Franklin was responsible for leading a multi-discipline team of experts in the advancement of evidence-based prevention practices for over three million active duty members, 20 million veterans, and their families. Dr. Franklin has represented DoD and the VA during testimony in front of both chambers of Congress and she has advised the Office of the President, the Domestic Policy Council, and the National Security Council. An innovative leader, she spearheaded a national effort to close the gaps between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veteran Affairs by leading cross agency efforts tied to a White House Executive Order addressing critical periods of risk for servicemen, women and veterans. In addition, Dr. Franklin has led numerous caucus roundtable discussions with members of Congress and she has presented or served on multiple task-force groups, panels for national-level committees such as the National Academies of Sciences, the Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, the Fort Hood Task Force, and the American Association of Suicidology.
Dr. Franklin has authored multiple chapters in the Military Social Work textbooks and she has published in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to suicide prevention and substance abuse. Since transitioning to the private sector, Dr. Franklin has been instrumental in the advancement of mental health literacy across the nation and she has championed the development of training on evidence-based practices with the goal of obtaining more efficacious mental health care outcomes for at-risk population groups. Dr. Franklin has a PhD in social work from Virginia Commonweal University and an advanced certificate from the Center for Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis (CARMA). Dr. Franklin holds certificates from Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education on “Leading Large Organizational Change” and Women in Leadership” as well as the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School course on “Executive Leadership.”
Wendy Lakso
With over 25 years of experience in the public and private sector, Wendy Lakso has dedicated her career to supporting military service members, veterans, and their families. A proven leader, Ms. Lakso has achieved extraordinary results while directing multidisciplinary teams created to address some of the most vexing national public health challenges. As the Deputy Executive Director for the President’s Executive Order, Ms. Lakso orchestrated the creation of the requisite infrastructure to implement the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End the Tragedy of Suicide. She is also credited with establishing the DoD Suicide Prevention Outreach, Communications, and Partnership program where she established a first-of-its-kind national peer-support center of excellence. Widely respected, Ms. Lakso was the logical choice to choreograph the joint DoD-VA Suicide Prevention Conference in 2017 and 2019 setting records for attendance at both events. A trusted leader who gets results, Ms. Lakso was selected to lead the Department of Veteran Affairs Governor’s and Mayor’s Challenge where she partnered with over 35 state-level administrations to develop public health driven strategic plans designed to reduce veteran suicide.
A visionary leader, Ms. Lakso pioneered the “Resiliency Campus” concept which harmonizes components of mind, body, and spirit to address community needs following the tragic events at Fort Hood, Texas. Her transformational approach was widely identified as a best practice and subsequently mandated across all Army installations. She is masterful at assessing organizational and community gaps in wellness services and leveraging collaborative partnerships to achieve synergistic impacts. A talented communicator, Ms. Lakso is frequently sought out to speak at high profile events with federal and state entities from across the country. She has briefed several congressional members and caucuses and the appropriations committee on suicide mitigation efforts and she has twice been selected as the keynote speaker for the National Association of Counties. Ms. Lakso is a true public health expert leading across partnerships, outreach, communications, field operations, and translating research findings into implementation plans for wide scale execution.
