Bring Black women’s experiences
into the conversation.
I connect mental health knowledge, storytelling, and community experience to questions about Black women’s care, how their distress is understood, and the support they can actually use.
For professional and community audiences, I offer presentations, workshops, panels, and facilitated conversations. Explore selected sessions below, then tell me about your audience.
Workshops built around
what your audience needs.
These topics grow from presentations I have developed. An adaptation starts with your audience, learning priorities, available time, and the scope of the engagement.
The Record After You
How Records Shape Forensic Decisions About Black Women
A clinical description can travel further than the encounter that produced it. This session examines what a note establishes, what it assumes, and what the next reader may conclude.
Audience, format & learning focus
For: Behavioral-health professionals, advocates, record users, and staff in forensic or correctional settings.
Format: Case-based teaching, a note-revision exercise, and discussion. The accepted Drexel workshop is 75 minutes; other formats can be discussed.
Participants examine: How to distinguish observation, reported information, and interpretation; identify missing context; and write or question a record without erasing symptoms, behavior, or legitimate accountability.
Accepted workshop: Drexel’s 2026 Forensic Rights and Treatment Conference. Creator and lead presenter: Cerissa A. Brown, LBSW.
View the Drexel sessionWhen a Black Woman Says Something Has Changed
Mental Health, Midlife, and Being Taken Seriously
Changes in mood, sleep, functioning, or behavior deserve careful attention. This conversation considers Black women’s experiences during perimenopause and midlife, including how concerns are heard and how women can prepare to discuss them.
Audience, format & learning focus
For: Women’s organizations, community groups, and audiences learning about Black women’s health.
Format: Educational presentation with guided discussion; length and emphasis agreed for the audience.
Participants examine: Changes worth describing to a healthcare professional, the limits of assumptions about what those changes mean, and practical ways to prepare questions and seek support.
Presented October 23, 2026, for The Royal Shift: PAUSE Awareness 2026. Adaptation inquiries welcome.
Discuss this topicFor Us, By Us
Building Mutual Aid That Works
What does it take to turn a wish to help into a workable way of supporting one another? This workshop makes space to examine community needs, shared effort, and the practical choices behind mutual aid.
Audience, format & learning focus
For: Community groups, organizers, nonprofits, and people developing a collective response to local needs.
Format: Facilitated workshop with participant materials and discussion. Originally developed as a two-hour virtual workshop; adaptations can be discussed.
Participants examine: The need they want to address, what people can contribute, and responsibilities and next steps that make an idea more workable.
Created, produced, and facilitated February 2, 2025. Adaptation inquiries welcome.
Discuss a workshopNext on the calendar.
The Record After You
How Records Shape Forensic Decisions About Black Women. Drexel University College of Medicine, 34th Annual Forensic Rights and Treatment Conference.
Live virtual workshop · Session W01
12:15–1:30 p.m. Central / 1:15–2:30 p.m. Eastern.
Experience behind the teaching.
2026
E.L.E.C.T. Teen Summit
Panelist and breakout-session facilitator for Community Care Development Network, including a discussion of boys’ self-care.
2023
Environmental justice & community health
Public testimony at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing about coal-ash concerns affecting Uniontown, Alabama.
Read hearing coverage2023
NAMICon
Express Talk speaker at the National Alliance on Mental Illness conference.
Black Mental Health Matters: scheduled October 29, 2026
The host’s original listing described a conversation about culturally competent therapy and healing resources. Visit the host’s video page for viewing information.
View the scheduled-appearance recordTell me who will be in the room.
Share your organization, audience, topic, date, location or virtual format, available time, and budget. We can discuss the learning purpose, scope, and fee before an engagement is agreed.
The inquiry button opens an email. You can also write directly to speaking@cerissabrown.me. Please leave out client information and confidential health details.