Houston P. A. hosted by Laurent

Katya Dow is the legal program director for the Juvenile and Capital Advocacy Project. She is also a legal practice law professor at the University of Houston Law Center. Two of her students are with her: Tressa Surratt and Lizzie Lawrie. The Juvenile Records Sealing Project helps individuals with juvenile records to expunge those records. (We are not talking about violent crimes, here.) This is a...

Marilyn Brown is the president & CEO of Coalition for the Homeless of Houston, Harris County and Dr. Cathy Troisi is with the UT Health School of Public Health. Thanks to their annual count, they have measured a 60% reduction in homelessness in Houston, an extraordinary achievement. Lead by the Coalition, the Harris County area coordinated its non-profit organizations and city services. We discuss...

Rodney Waters is the program director for Music Doing Good with Scholarships. Two of their recipients are also on the show: Nathaniel Zhang, a student at Clemens HS and founder the Music Doing Good Volunteer Team and Solomomon Alhakeem, a student at HSPVA who just got accepted into the Houston Grand Opera’s HS Voice Studio. Along with the rest of their peers, they are celebrating their success wit...

Whitney Easterling is the director of development for Young Audiences of Houston and Glenn Bailey is the director of community and school partnerships. Young Audiences of Houston serves 250,000 people in the Houston area every year and with the opening of Levy Park, they have a new platform to share their awesome activities (which are free!). They also put on shows at the Miller Outdoor Theater an...

Dr. Melanie Johnson is the President and CEO for The Health Museum, one of the coolest destinations for families in H-Town. They are open for free on Thursday afternoons which means you can check it out first hand with your entire family. They are signing up children for their summer camps and will welcome their annual Global Teen Summit with teens from all over the world coming to Houston to lear...

Antoine Plante is the conductor, co-founder and artistic director of Mercury, the Orchestra Redefined. They are performing Mozart's Requiem on May 13th at the Wortham Center and this gives us the opportunity to talk about the musical genius's unfinished masterpiece. Mozart died before The Requiem was completed and someone else put the final touches to the composition. It was a great mystery for a...

Outspoken Bean is a Writers in the Schools (WITS) evangelist and their program coordinator. He is also the head-coach for Meta-4 Houston and the founder of the Space City Slam Series. With him is Analicia Sotelo, the communications strategist for WITS. WITS engages Houston-area youths, ages 13 to 19, to perform in the Space City Slam Series which is the largest youth poetry slam competition in Tex...

Dr. Shaine Morris is a pediatric cardiologist from Texas Children's Hospital. Owen Gray is a youth ambassador for the Marfan Foundation. He speaks from experience since he is living with Marfan syndrome. With him is his mother, Amy Gray who is an advocate for the Marfan Foundation. Marfan syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects the body's connective tissues which hold our cells and organs toge...

Steve Lufburrow is the president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Houston, and Will Lufburrow is their director of development and special projects. With them is Nick Bassitt, a Marine now serving as Goodwill's Manager of Veteran Services. We discuss the services available to our veterans and Nick shares some of the experiences common to troops returning to civilian life. Being a veteran is a bar...

Nancy Henderek is the founder and artistic director of Dance Salad Festival, the biggest dance rendez-vous of the year. The show opens on Thursday, April 13th and runs through Saturday the 15th at the Wortham Center. This year's guests include one of the dance world's biggest stars: Mary Agnes Gillot, who will perform and answer questions during the free choreographer's forum on Wednesday, April 1...

Allison Booker Brooks is the CEO of The YWCA of Houston. On May 4th, they are celebrating the 31st Outstanding Women's Luncheon. It also marks the organization's 110th years of empowering women and girls in the Houston area. The event is at Royal Sonesta and is open to the public. All the women being recognized have great story to tell and we discuss the high school student who designed and wrote...

Liz Vallette is the president of Plant It Forward and Randi Rogers is their farm share Manager. PIFF provides refugees with the opportunity to farm a plot of land and sell their vegetables and make a profit. All the farms have been donated by Houstonians and Houston institutions. There are many ways to participate. You can visit Plant It Forward at local famer's markets and you can buy a farm shar...

Carleen Graham is the director of HGOco. Her job is to connect the Houston Grand Opera to its Houston community. Their programs include setting up performances in schools for kids who wouldn't otherwise be exposed to classic music. They are also celebrating the world premiere of Some Light Emerges, a new opera which marks the company's 63rd world premiere. It's a big deal because Houston Grand Ope...

Jane Weiner is the president & CEO of Hope Stone, Inc. and the artistic director of Hope Stone Dance Company and The Pink Ribbons Project. With her is Bill Reese, a navy veteran and a member of #Warriors, the Drum Circle you might have seen open Hope Stone's December show. Bill tells us about how hard it is to keep a beat when you're just starting out and how improving brings peace and a sense of...

Kelly Young is the CEO of AIDS Foundation Houston. The news on the subject of HIV infections is both good and bad. While the rate of infection has gone up in recent years, especially in the poorer parts of the South of the U.S., it is also true that awareness and help are more available than ever. We discuss the availability of life-saving treatments which means being diagnosed with HIV is no long...

Doug Overman is the park director for The Levy Park Conservancy. The park's grand opening is on Saturday, February 25th. Headlined by Groupo Fantasma who will play a full concert in the evening, the park's many amenities will finally open to the public. The park also functions as a symbol of how Houstonians view the relationship between work, home and the environment and Non-Profits can work hand...

Andrea Simon is the research coordinator for the SPARK study at Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Robin Kochel is an assistant professor of pediatric psychology at the Baylor College of Medicine and associate director for research for the autism center at the Texas Children's Hospital. She is the principal investigator for SPARK. Judy Blake is the Mother of a 21 year ol...

Sara Brown is the communications manager for Coalition for the Homeless and Dr. Cathy Troisi, is an associate professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health. Every year, the Coalition's volunteers go out and count the number of homeless people living in the area. They are adding data from Montgomery county as well. The data then allows our non-profits and government agencies to deplo...

Oli Mohammed is the executive director of The Furniture Bank. They are celebrating 25 years of service to Houstonians. They debuted their "Adopt a Family" program last year and also moved into new facilities (which officially open in April). They have a new store opened to the public and of course, they will come and pick up your used furniture for free, as they always have. They'll also come get...

Steve Lufburrow is the president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Houston and Will Lufburrow is their director of development and special projects. Goodwill employ nearly 2000 people, making them one of the largest employers in Houston. They have been one of the city's economic engines for decades and their business model is designed to help people find employment. Once hired, they obtain trainin...

Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation

Terry Keane is a tutor with Literacy Advance and Nada Hassan is one of his students. She emigrated from Egypt in 2014 and therefore has a lot interesting observations to make about Texan life in Houston. While she had studied English at the University (She has a degree in Egyptology), this was British English and you can imagine that Texans don't sound anything like that to her! She therefore soug...

Reginald Hatter is the Executive Director of Workshop Houston and he is one of their ground mentors and educators. With him is 15 year-old Brianna Burns aka Lil' Bri on stage. She is a hip-hop artist and I was extremely impressed with her expertise in Pro-Tools and other professional-standard music and mixing software. She is the embodiment of how successful an Org like Workshop Houston can be by...

Hank Rush is the President and CEO of The Star of Hope Mission and Scott Arthur is their director of public relations. The Star of Hope Mission has been caring for Houston's homeless population since 1906. They are now building a superb campus called The Cornerstone Community which will allow them to take in homeless families and provide them with long term psychological counselling, skill trainin...

Society for the Performing Arts