Meet our esteemed moderator:

Dr. Dan Reidenberg is the Managing Director of the National Council for Suicide Prevention and the current US Representative to the International Association for Suicide Prevention. He serves as Co-Chair of the IASP Media and Suicide Task Force. Dr. Dan has conducted training for the Poynter Institute training journalists, created a national Award for Excellence in Media Reporting on Suicide - as well as the world’s only Certification for Safe Messaging program. He has led the development of and wrote the US Recommendations for Media Reporting on Suicide, the Recommendations for Reporting on Mass Shootings, is co-editor of the WHO Media Reporting Guide and was a co-lead on the WHO’s Resource for Filmmakers and others Working on Stage and Screen. Dr. Dan led the workgroup on warning signs for suicide and helped develop the US National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and the National Research Agenda.

Get to know our panelists:

• Kelly McBride is the Senior Vice President and Chair of Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership Poynter Institute, journalist, consultant and one of the country’s leading voices on media ethics and democracy. McBride was a newspaper reporter covering crime and religion. She’s worked as a public editor at ESPN and co-edited the book, The New Ethics of Journalism: Guiding Principles for the 21st Century.

• Patrick Joseph Murphy is an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd United States Under Secretary of the Army. He was America’s first Iraq War veteran to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, representing Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district from 2007 to 2011. An award-winning media executive, he founded the production company Taking the Hill, which creates television, films and digital content.

• Brandy Vega is an entrepreneur and humanitarian. She loves helping others and is a military Veteran. Vega has been involved in broadcast journalism, public affairs, media, marketing and advertising in television, corporate America.

• Mike Walter is a five-time Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist. He currently serves as general news anchor on the nightly CGTN-America News hour. Walter witnessed the Pentagon attack in 2001 while working as Senior Correspondent at USA TODAY LIVE. He shared his first-person account of watching the 9/11 attack with the BBC, CBS, CNN, and the Canadian Broadcasting Network. In addition, Walter was a key contributor to two books about the 9/11 attacks, “Broadcasting through Crisis”, and “Covering Catastrophe.”



• Katherine Schweit is a former prosecutor and retired FBI agent executive who created and led the FBI's active shooter initiative after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She was on the crisis teams responding to tragedies at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Pentagon, and the Navy Yard in the Washington, DC, area.