There is no commercial support for this activity.

About the speaker

Shawnee Benton Gibson, LMSW/FDLC, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Spirit of A Woman (SOW) Leadership Development Institute. SOW was established in 2002 to educate, elevate, and effect positive and sustainable transformation for individuals, groups, families, communities and leaders within institutions. Under Benton Gibson’s leadership and vision, SOW offers innovative coaching, counseling and training experiences to those who are seeking to expand their power, purpose, and impact in the world.

Benton Gibson is a licensed practitioner with over 31 years of professional experience. She is also the Co-Founder of the ARIAH Foundation (The Advancement of Reproductive Innovation Through Artistry & Healing) which was created in memory of her eldest daughter, Shamony Makeba Gibson, who passed away on October 6, 2019, due to complications associated with giving birth. Shamony’s story and Benton Gibson’s reproductive activism are depicted in the award-winning documentary “Aftershock” which addresses the black maternal health crisis in the United States and its origins.

Benton Gibson’s expertise ranges from substance abuse prevention, treatment and recovery, child welfare, youth development, individual, family and group counseling, trauma, grief, loss and bereavement, women’s health and leadership, birth equity, and racial equity, social, and restorative justice. She employs a holistic, cultural and spiritual approach to her work and applies a racial equity, and social justice lens at the foundation for all of the programs and services that her company provides. Her principal teaching, training, and healing tools consist of spiritual counseling, vision coaching, psychodrama, sociometry, sacred rituals, energy work, the performing arts, and storytelling as mediums to ignite transformation and initiate catharsis. According to Shawnee, doing healing work is “a labor of love and liberation”.

Disclosure Statements

Sheppard Pratt holds the standard that its continuing medical education programs should be free of commercial bias and conflict of interest. In accord with Sheppard Pratt's Disclosure Policy, as well as standards of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and the American Medical Association (AMA), all planners, reviewers, speakers and persons in control of content have been asked to disclose any relationship he /she has with any entity producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients, during the past 24 months. All planners, reviewers and speakers have also been asked to disclose any payments accepted for this lecture from any entity besides Sheppard Pratt, and if there will be discussion of any products, services, or off-label uses of product(s) during this presentation.

Shawnee Benton Gibson, LMSW/FDLC, reports that she has no relationships with any entity producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients, during the past 24 months. She will not discuss any products, services, or off-label uses in this presentation. All relationships have been mitigated through review.

Event Planners/Reviewers Disclosures: The following event planners and/or reviewers are reported as having no financial interest, arrangement or affiliation with any entity producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients, during the past 24 months: Todd Peters, MD, Elizabeth Ryznar, MD, MSc, Louis Marino, MD, Devi Bhuyan, PsyD, Faith Dickerson, PhD, Carrie Etheridge, LCSW-C, Tom Flis, LCPC, Lisa Illum, MLIS, MEd, and Jennifer Tornabene.