Featured Coffee Break Speakers
Claire E. Parsons
Clair spoke at the February 18th coffee break on bringing mindfulness to your life and your law practice. Clair is a lawyer, mom, writer, speaker, and leader. From Claire, “I’ve been practicing law for more than a decade and started meditating early in her law practice. It changed my life so I started speaking and writing about it and obtained a meditation teacher certification from The Mindfulness Center. I’m passionate about mindfulness and love showing fellow lawyers and other professionals what it can do for them.”
You can keep up with Clair by following her on her blog, utilizing the resources she shares on her website and listening to her speak on multiple podcasts. All can be found at her website, linked below.
Kayte Halstead, L.AC, MSTOM
Kayte suffered with migraines for more than 13 years before she discovered acupuncture. She was fascinated by a medicine that engaged her rational mind, demanded she access her intuition, and provided unlimited lifelong learning.
She is even more passionate about the relevance of “ancient medicine” today than when she first opened Acupuncture 4 Health in 2003.
Kayte’s vision of intentional healthcare bridges personal responsibility with lifestyle management, Oriental medicine and western medical care. She is committed to integrating functional medicine, lifestyle medicine and Oriental medicine into a rich tapestry of support for the 21st century.
Nationally certified and with a master’s degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine, Kayte is also a founding member of the South Dakota Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Association (SDAOMA). Currently, there are no state standards regulating the practice of acupuncture. Thus, the major purposes of the association are to educate; to promote excellence and integrity within the profession; and to establish Oriental medicine as a distinct field of medicine in the state.
Beth Walz Davis
Beth retired at the end of 2017at President of Dakota Resources, a non-profit that served rural communities, to pursue her passion for normalizing death in this culture and directly supporting individuals and small groups in their emerging journeys. Beth is a certified End of Life Doula with a BA in Psychology and Religion from Augustana College with persona experience in helping people through the dying process.
“We are a death phobic culture. Death is most often viewed as a medical failure. Yet everyone dies. Significant health care costs are incurred in the last months of life in service to the god of “more time”. Quality of life suffers. People die sicker than they need to be. Families are left to guess what they want to happen while they are dying and after they are gone. I am called to restore death to its place as a natural part of life for patience, friends and families of people who are dying, health care professionals and the community at large. I also assist people with the grieving process after a loved one has died.
Chase Anderson, Esq.
Chase is a Case Manager at Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, works with lawyers, law student and judges on issues related to well-being, mental health and substance use. He is a member of the Commission on Lawyer Assistance Program’s Law School Assistance Committee and previous Co-Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Well-Being Committee. Prior to joining LCL in 2015, Chase worked as a counselor, a social worker and as a practicing family law attorney for seven years and understands the challenges and stressors facing Minnesota’s legal professionals.
Joan Bibelhausen
Joan has served as Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers since 2005. She is an attorney and is nationally recognized for her work in the lawyer assistance and diversity and inclusion realms. Joan has significant additional training in counseling, mental health and addiction, diversity, employment issues, and management. She has spent more than two decades working with lawyers, judges, and law students at a crossroads because of mental illness and addiction concerns and well-being, stress, and related issues.
Joan has developed and presented numerous CLE and other programs throughout Minnesota and nationally and has written on mental health and addiction, implicit bias and mental health, career and life balance and satisfaction, stress, diversity and inclusion, marketing, and other issues concern to the legal profession. She is active in the MN State Bar Association, Hennepin and Ramsey County and American Bar Associations, and MN Women Lawyers. She has served on the ABA Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs (CoLAP) and its Advisory Commission. She has chaired CoLAP’s Education Committee and its 2016 Conference Planning Committee. She has chaired the MSBA Life and the Law Committee and the HCBA Solo and Small Firm Practice Section and has co-chaired the HCBA Diversity Committee. She represents the disability perspective on many bar-related diversity committees and initiatives, including the MSBA Diversity and Inclusion Council. Joan also served on the MSBA Board of Governors, HCBA’s Strategic Planning and Leadership Institute task forces, and the Northstar Problem Gambling Alliance board.
Joan coauthored “Stress and Resiliency in the US Judiciary” for the ABA 2020 Journal of the Professional Lawyer, “Reducing the Stigma – William Mitchell College of Law – Spring 2015“, published in the Mitchell Hamline Law Review (Vol. 41, Issue 3), and frequently writes for Minnesota and national bar publications. Minnesota Lawyer recognized her with a 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Award for her work regarding implicit bias and mental health in the legal profession.
Robin Wolpert, JD, PhD
Robin Wolpert is an accomplished appellate practitioner, business litigator, and white-collar criminal defense attorney at Sapientia Law Group in Minneapolis. Her 20-year career began in BigLaw, and she went on to serve as a prosecutor and Senior Counsel of Compliance & Business Conduct at 3M. Robin uses her unique blend of government, private-sector, and in-house experience to address legal, policy, leadership, and organizational challenges for a wide variety of clients. Before becoming a lawyer, Robin earned her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Her areas of expertise include constitutional law, judicial politics, cognitive and behavioral economics, and political and organizational psychology. Robin was Visiting Instructor at Georgetown University and Assistant Professor of Government & International Politics at the University of South Carolina. She earned her B.A. from Colby College and her J.D. from Cornell Law School. Robin is passionate about public service. She oversees Minnesota’s lawyer disciplinary system as Chair of the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board. Robin is Secretary of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, Member of the ABA House of Delegates, and past President of the Minnesota State Bar Association. She served on the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being from 2018-20.