Samantha Horwitz, is a 9/11 First Responder, former United States Secret Service Agent, speaker and author, Sam has become an expert in handling stress and managing PTS. She has spoken nationally to Law Enforcement, Veteran, business, and faith-based communities on how to recognize and combat the effects of PTS, how to minimize the damage stress can cause in the workplace, and how to support those who have PTS.

John Salerno is also a 9/11 first responder, a retired NYPD Detective, and firefighter turned Comedian. John spent most of his life working the rough streets of Brooklyn, where he saw how bad things can get. Since his diagnosis of PTSD, he decided not to allow his condition to stop him from making a difference in others’ lives. John is dedicated to bringing awareness to the suicide epidemic plaguing our first responder community through his work at A Badge of Honor.

A Badge of Honor, is a non-profit that provides PTS awareness and suicide prevention for first responders and veterans.
 

Steve Kashul is a 35 plus year veteran of on-air professional television and radio. He served 24 seasons as the Pre-Game, Halftime, and Post-Game TV and Radio Host of the Chicago Bulls.

Kashul is also co-owner of Channel Fore, Inc. which produces “The Golf Scene” TV Show on NBC Sports Chicago, of which he serves as the principal host. He is also host of “Sports Medicine Weekly”, a weekly one hour radio show that aired for ten years on ESPN 1000 Chicago and 670 The Score – WSCR-AM in Chicago and now heard on podcasts nationally. In addition he is an Executive Broker/Agent with Esser Hayes Insurance Group/Assured Partners in Naperville.

Honors and awards include two Emmy Awards for his work as host of Chicago Bulls Basketball on SportsChannel (1991-1997) and winner of a Telly Award in 2006 for his work as host on “The Golf Scene” television show. Telly Awards are recognized worldwide for excellence in broadcast television. He is also a member of the Chicago 16” Softball Hall of Fame, being inducted in the Media Wing in January of 2009.

His work has also appeared on a national scale, having served as the lead announcer and lead voice of the Senior PGA Tour for CNBC, as well as live events on Golf Channel.

Kashul has also served as the play by play voice for the Celebrity Golf Association’s Professional Golf Tour, Big Ten Women’s Volleyball, Illinois High School Association sporting events, Men’s Professional 16” Softball, and was a reporter and host for ten years for the Notre Dame Football Coaches Show as well as host of “The Spirit of Sports”, a show focusing on Special Olympics in Illinois.

Steve has also been a feature writer/columnist for the Chicago District Golfer Magazine, and is a former sports writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, covering High School athletics.

He has also served on numerous committees including those representing The March of Dimes, LaRabida Children’s Hospital, Midtown Educational Foundation, Illinois Special Olympics, Des Plaines Chamber of Commerce, Easterseals, and the Greater Chicago Club Managers Association.

Steve is a graduate of DePaul University in Chicago where he majored in Communications, was born and raised in Park Ridge, Illinois, and currently resides with his wife Cindy and sons Cory and Troy in Naperville, Illinois.

Lou Vickery is a former professional baseball player, stock broker, motivational speaker, radio and TV show host, and author of fifteen (15) books on a variety of topics (books in print can be reviewed at louvickerybooks.com and amazon.com}.

After graduating from Escambia County High School in Atmore, Lou signed a professional baseball contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. Over a ten-year career, Lou also played for the New York Yankees organization and coached in the Cincinnati Reds organization.

 Lou got his B.S. degree from Troy State University (AL), graduating after his baseball career. He coached a year in Troy, then spent four years with Merrill Lynch as an Account Executive. Lou moved into the training and development field with Pat Ryan and Associates of Chicago, Ill. in l974.

After 1980, he did contract training for numerous national organizations and over a thirty (30) year period worked with over 2,800 companies in 44 states and two foreign countries. Lou has spoken in every city in the USA with a population of over 150,000 people. Lou spent almost fifteen years as a radio show host before retiring in 2017.

Lou is the author of fourteen books on a variety of topics. Books in print are available at Amazon and louvickerybooks.com.

Lou resides in Fairhope, Alabama where he plays tennis three to four days a week.

Former 3-star Admiral Joe Sestak is an experienced, independent leader who served in the Navy for 31 years and then as the highest ranking military officer ever elected to Congress when he represented Pennsylvania’s Seventh Congressional District.

When Joe Sestak’s daughter, Alex, was very young, she drew two red shoes and wrote above them, “Joe Sestak is Walking in Your Shoes.” Joe hung Alex’s drawing on his office wall to remind him of what service means: to walk in someone else’s shoes and see the world through another’s eyes.

Joe has walked in many different shoes in his life: as a father and a husband, as an officer and then an Admiral in the U.S. Navy, as a Congressman from Pennsylvania, and as he walked 422 miles across the state to speak with Americans during his Senate campaign.

It was the experience of Alex’s battle and defeat of brain cancer as a four year old child that moved her Dad to serve his country in Congress after 31 years of naval service. With her courage and the care she received from Joe’s military healthcare coverage, Alex beat that demon and Joe dedicated himself toward everyone having access to the same quality of healthcare. After resigning from the Navy and Alex’s recovery, he ran and won in a Republican District under the slogan, “National security begins at home, in health security.”

Joe Sestak is an experienced, independent leader who rose to the rank of 3-star Admiral.  He was the highest ranking military officer ever elected to Congress when he represented Pennsylvania’s Seventh Congressional District from 2007-2011. He commanded an aircraft carrier battle group that conducted combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq with 30 U.S. and allied ships and more than 15,000 sailors and 100 aircraft.  Joe served as President Clinton’s Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council in the White House, the first Director of the Navy’s strategic anti-terrorism unit (Deep Blue) after 9/11, and the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Requirements responsible for the Navy’s five year $350 billion warfare requirements. As Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, he proposed a controversial reduction in ship-levels from 375 to 260 ships that proved unnerving to the military-industrial-congressional complex, advocating for a greater future capability by harnessing cyberspace, at less cost.

In addition to leading a series of operational commands at sea, Joe received a PhD in Political Economy and Government, and a Masters in Public Administration, from Harvard University.  But he is most proud of being dad to Alex and the husband of Susan, whom he somehow convinced to marry him, as she has also taught him much. This includes from work in international environmental issues, from Kazakhstan to Mozambique; Russian relations, even into Soviet Union archives as U.S. teams still search for clues to our missing POW/MIAs, and on suicide prevention for the Veterans Administration and the Defense Department.

Born and raised in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where he attended Cardinal O’Hara High school prior to graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, in 2006 Joe defeated a ten-term Republican incumbent in his nearly 2:1 Republican home District to become the second Democrat congressman since the Civil War. As a member of both the Armed Services and Education & Labor Committees, and as Vice Chairman of the Small Business Committee, Joe had 19 pieces of bi-partisan legislation passed in the House during his first term, and was named the most productive member of his Congressional class by the Majority Leader’s Office in 2007. He was also recognized for serving four times the constituent cases than the average Congressional office, while hosting an average of 15 large summit gatherings in his district each year on key issues. As a result, his Republican District re-elected Joe by 20 points without his having to air a single campaign ad.

Joe ran for U.S. Senate in 2010, despite the opposition of the Democratic party’s Washington establishment. He disagreed that Republican Senator Arlen Specter should become the party’s nominee in order to avoid defeat in the Republican primary after his 30 years of damaging votes, particularly his humiliation of Ms. Anita Hill when she testified about her sexual harassment by now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Joe believed Pennsylvanians deserved a leader who would always be accountable to the principle of people first, ahead of self, party or special interest. Against the odds, he overcame a 40 point deficit to win the Democratic primary over the 30-year incumbent. The general election was decided by only two points in the Tea Party year where the party lost the Pennsylvania governor’s race and five Congressional seats by an average of 11 points – all despite being outspent more than any other Senate or Governor’s race (except one) in America that year.  Afterwards, Joe went to each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to thank his supporters, including countless African-American churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship that welcomed him.

In Joe’s second Senate race, Joe launched his campaign by walking 422 miles across Pennsylvania, from the border with New Jersey to that with Ohio, stating that “we are in a fight for the soul of America” at the kickoff and throughout the remainder of the election. He held a town hall each day in small towns and cities, and then went to each of the remaining 67 counties. Simultaneously, he published his vision in a policy-based book, “Walking in Your Shoes to Restore the American Dream.”

However, the Democratic Senate leadership directed Joe to “stop walking and just fundraise.”  When Joe demurred, the Democratic leadership sought a primary opponent, funneling over $6 million into false opposition ads that the Washington Post assigned its highest rating of falsity, to win the primary, but losing the general election.

In Congress, Joe championed fiscally accountable “pay-as-you-go” legislation to help ensure its passage.  He advanced educational legislation, from pre-K through retraining; seniors’ quality of life – including authoring and passing the first Elder Abuse Victims legislation in 17 years — and veterans’ educational and healthcare expansion.  He sponsored small business legislation for access to start-up capital, tax and regulatory relief, and workforce development, including initiating and passing legislation for a 35% increase in funding for Women’s Business Centers. He pursued healthcare issues ranging from pediatric cancer to mental health parity, as well as autism as he authored the first successful increase in funding for autism in 12 years. Chosen to serve on two bi-partisan national security Select Congressional Committees, he worked on refocusing our security force posture toward the Western Pacific and China, advocating a new emphasis on cyberspace warfare, and reprioritization of defense funding toward such newly emerging warfare capability areas, with a reformed accountable defense procurement system.  Joe also supported energy development legislation for renewables, with environmental safeguards and job creation, to address Climate Change.

After Congress, Joe taught courses on Ethical Leadership and on Restoring the American Dream at Cheyney University – the oldest historically black university in America – and Carnegie Mellon University, and was the General Omar N. Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership, a joint faculty appointment at the United States Army War College, Dickinson College, and the Penn State University Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs.  

Admiral Sestak remained active in public service through the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; the Ploughshares Fund working on the reduction of nuclear weapons; the Lenfest Foundation focused on education in Philadelphia, pre-K through early childhood, and those who had or were about to drop out of high school; co-chair with former Republican governor Mark Schweiker of the Pennsylvania State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, focused on U.S. diplomacy and development; then-Secretary of State Clinton’s Advisory Committee on U.S. educational programs; and the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, as well as issues regarding small businesses, energy and the environment.

Finally, Joe convened the youth of the world from nearly 160 nations at Constitution Hall in Washington DC for the inaugural robotics Olympics highlighting the need for global STEM education, as teams from the Congo to Iran, a Syrian refugee team and an all-girls Afghan Muslim team showed we have more in common in the world than we do differences.

Most importantly, having served with all Americans in the global canvas of the Navy, and served you as a Congressman, Joe knows that Americans have more in common than we do differences. Now, as President, Joe will need all of you to help answer the call for America’s leadership to restore a just world order so it serves us by raising our collective good, here at home – done by Joe’s gaining your trust that he will always remain accountable to you, alone.

Vicki Cody's journals the selflessness and sacrifices families make for their military members. She also illuminates the roller coaster of stress, loneliness, sleepless nights, humor, joys, and, eventually, resilience that make up her life while her husband is away at war.

When Vicki Cody got married 46 years ago, she also became wedded to the Army. In fact, her marriage has been inseparable from the military. She has spent her adult life supporting her family of soldiers and penned two award-winning books –Army Wife and Fly Safe – that help tell the story of what she and millions of army spouses and parents face when their loved ones go off to serve their country thousands of miles away. An author, speaker, and relentless military family advocate, Vicki is on a mission to help those who support our selfless service members.

Vicki, who also penned a manual for the Association of the United States Army, Your Soldier, Your Army: A Family Guide, that has been distributed to over a half-million families, luckily has always welcomed home her husband, two sons, and daughter-in-law who also has served. But she cautions that not everyone makes it home alive or in one piece, physically or psychologically.

“Families live in fear of the late-night call or knock at the door to deliver bad news,” says Vicki. “I know many friends who have lost sons and daughters to the battlefield. My books provide an authentic, insightful, and heartfelt look at those who are the backbone for our soldiers.”