Celebrating 7 'Lucky' Years of Psych Congress Elevate: A Preview of Events With Stacey Flowers and the Co-Chairs

In this podcast hosted by Stacey Flowers, keynote speaker at Psych Congress Elevate 2023, the meeting co-chairs, Steven Chan, MD, MBA; Craig Chepke, MD, DFAPA; and Amber Hoberg, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC share what they're most looking forward to at Elevate's seventh 'lucky' year in Las Vegas. 

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Read the Transcript:

Stacey Flowers, MA: Welcome to Psych Congress Elevate. My name is Stacey Flowers. I'm going to be your welcoming keynote, and today I'm going to be having a conversation with the co-chairs who brought you this event. We're going to get started with our introductions, and then we're going to dive into what you can look forward to most when you are attending Elevate this year. We're going to start with Dr. Chepke. Please introduce yourself.

Craig Chepke, MD, DFAPA: Hey, everybody. I'm Craig Chepke. I am a psychiatrist in private practice at Excel Psychiatric Associates in Huntersville, North Carolina. I'm also an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry for Atrium Health. I also serve as the scientific advisor to Psych Congress, and most importantly, I'm one of the three co-chairs for Psych Congress Elevate this year.

Flowers: Okay. Dr. Chan?

Steve Chan, MD, MBA: Awesome. It's good to meet you all. My name is Steve Chan. I am a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University. I also serve as Chief Technology Officer of a budding telehealth startup called AsyncHealth. Just like Craig, most importantly, I am excited to be a co-chair with Elevate.

Flowers: Great, and Amber Hoberg?

Amber Hoberg, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC: Hi. I'm Amber Hoberg. I'm a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. I'm in the San Antonio, Texas area. I have a private practice as well as work with Morningstar Family Medicine, doing work in group homes, nursing homes, assisted livings, and also inpatient hospitalization. So I'm excited to be here with you guys, excited to be one of the co-chairs this year for Elevate, and look forward to this conversation today.

Flowers: I love that. As I mentioned before, my name is Stacey Flowers. You may have seen me on some of the marketing, but a little bit about me. I'm a creative consultant. I have worked in human resources for over a decade. What I do primarily is get to travel around the world, inspiring people to create real happiness as a motivational speaker. I love that work, and I also get to do a ton of coaching. I'm super honored to be co-hosting this podcast with the Elevate co-chairs. We can get into the conversation about what we're hoping to get out of this event this year, what my particular keynote is going to bring to the event. With that said, we'll start with--who's been with Elevate the longest? Let's start there in terms of whether you've been a co-chair or just involved in the organization.

Dr Chepke: That would be you, Steve.

Dr Chan: I first got started as a speaker way back when it first launched in San Francisco, so excited to be here.

Flowers: Okay. What's your most favorite thing about Elevate?

Dr Chan: Well, one of the things-

Flowers: ... in terms of what it does.

Dr Chan: Yeah, yeah, and one of my favorite things about Elevate is that it's focused on early career providers in mental health. Oftentimes when we are first starting out, we don't have the scaffolding or the support that we really, truly need to have our careers grow and allow us to take care of patients and each other, too. So I love how Elevate has focused on the early career providers' needs as well as providing them things like CV reviews, photo booths, and a lot of content that's tailored to their interests and their needs. So that's it in a nutshell, Stacey.

Flowers: Okay, that's beautiful. I think thinking about when you all first reached out to me to come in and speak, that was one of the things that I was most excited for as well. Well, actually, two things. I was excited to be talking to professionals in their early career, and then I was also excited to be in a position to give back to a profession that has been incredibly helpful to me in my career.

Something that I talk about on my social media all the time is my mental health journey and how that has impacted both my personal and professional life. So when I think about being able to get onstage and talk to them, my topic is going to be about power and personal power. When I think about being able to do that, it feels like an opportunity to give this big thank you to people who have elected to choose this profession to be able to help people with their mental and emotional and psychological health. So I'm super excited for the early careers because I want to get you all fired up about staying within this profession and continuing to do amazing work. I know that for me, I wouldn't be able to do any of the things that I've done in my lifetime without mental health professionals. So I think we're excited about some of the same things. When you think about what you are most excited about, Amber, what are some things that come to mind for you?

Hoberg: Well, I've been in practice 13 years, and every time I attend Psych Congress Elevate, I learn something new every single time. So that part has me so fired up, and this is so innovative, new types of topics that we're going to be talking about, more topics than usual this year. So I'm super, super excited to be there with everybody, learn with everybody, and also for these new, innovative things that we're going to be bringing to the table this year.

Flowers: Okay. All right. Well, speaking of topics, let's dive into some of those. Let's start with you, Craig, since you haven't shared just yet. What topic are you speaking about, and what can the audience look forward to?

Dr Chepke: Well, before I even get to that, one thing I want to say is so Steve said he has been with Elevate since the beginning. He didn't say how long that is. This is actually our seventh Psych Congress Elevate, so I think it's very appropriate we're in Las Vegas this year. So this is "Lucky Sevens" that we're going to be experiencing in Vegas. That's why I can't wait for everyone to get there. But then also, Steve mentioned he started off as a speaker and now is a co-chair. I started off as an attendee and then became a speaker and then now being a co-chair. So it's been just a really amazing journey for me. I'm really honored to be a part of this, and I've actually got three topics that I'm going to be speaking on for this year's Elevate.

I have one talk with my friend and colleague, Dr. Jonathan Meyer. We're going to be talking about lithium, one of the most essential medications in psychiatry, but also very underutilized. We're going to focus on some practical advice on what clinicians need to know for the use of lithium. So if you want to step up your use of lithium, want to know how to use it more appropriately, more often, then this is a great talk for this, I think, indispensable medication.

We also have a presentation on major depressive disorder. We have tons of challenges with helping people with major depressive disorder, and there could be some hope on the horizon. There's some really cool things that are coming out in the near future and that have already started to arrive. So that'll be with Dr. Rakesh Jain and Dr. Lara Shirikjian are my co-presenters for that one.

Finally, I'm going to be playing more of an emcee role with a presentation on TAAR1 agonists in schizophrenia. Dr. Jain and I also developed some posters, and we're going to be helping to interpret those posters and emceeing, things like that. Then there's going to be a more formal presentation that also accompanies it. So three very different topics spanning multiple different disease states and some really exciting, cool stuff I can't wait to share with everybody.

Flowers: These are going to be some really interesting topics. I think one of the things that I'm excited about as a layperson who is only in the profession as someone who has benefited from the profession, I think it's going to be interesting to come in and be able to listen to all of these. When I talked to the organizers, they let me know that I'm able to attend the entire event. I think of the three that you're going to be sharing on, the one that's most intriguing to me is the depressive disorder one and the idea that there's hope on the horizon.

So I'm really looking forward to the whole event. But I think learning a lot more about that, even as I think about my background and my family and some of the things that we deal with, I think it's going to be really interesting to be able to get a front row seat to a conversation that I wouldn't have otherwise had access to had I not been invited to speak. So thank you for that. Thank you.

Dr Chepke: You bet. I'm going to jump in on that one, because I think that the most important thing a healthcare provider can give to someone who's seeking treatment is not a prescription. It's hope. So that's something I really key in on. So I wanted to ask you, Stacey. So you are a very famous, well sought-after speaker, and you get tons of invites. How'd you choose us to come and speak and do our keynote presentation?

Flowers: Thank you for asking that. I think as I mentioned a little bit earlier, I was really excited about being able to bring inspiration to those of you all who are in early career. I think I was also very humbled and honored with the idea that I would be able to thank so many people who have already committed to the profession. Then I think just from understanding how my work has served other people, I think that when I think about people in the serving or helping profession, I think about how so much of the information that you consume on a daily basis just so you can do good work is for someone else. When I think about my own experience with my therapist, I think, "Okay. This is the person that's there for me. This is the person who's going to be there, pouring and sowing into me."

Saying yes to Elevate was an opportunity for me to come and share information that is just about pouring into you, just about pouring into you so that you can make sure that the power that you have to be able to do the things that you continue to do to serve other people and ultimately the happiness that you create in your life is something that can be sustainable. It was a very easy yes. Even when I was talking to my assistant about it, I'm like, "I want organizations that are in alignment with my vision, and I want to help more people create real happiness in their own life." So when this came across the board, I was just like, "Absolutely. I want to talk to the people who have made an investment in serving other people so I can be the person that's pouring into them."

In terms of me pouring into them, when we were going over the different topics that we could talk about, I was sharing this idea of your personal power, and you guys will hear more about that and the acronym and everything that it stands for. But I was sharing the idea of personal power, and I think when we are serving human beings, it can be one of the most taxing, yet rewarding experiences in our lifetime.

But if we don't know how to harness our own personal power, if we don't know how to stand in our personal power, we won't know how to rest. We won't know how to rest so that we can continue to be productive. We won't know how to be productive from a place of who we are and what we have to offer to the world, and we won't know how to actually experience the happiness that we deserve and desire in our own life. So being able to come to talk to those of you all who are in your early career and those of you all who are already committed to making sure this organization is successful and everybody in this profession is successful, is truly my honor. I'm so excited about it.

Dr Chepke: Well, we're really grateful that you decided to join us, and I can't wait to see your talk.

Flowers: Yeah. Thank you. So what about you, Steve? What are you going to be speaking about at Elevate?

Dr Chan: Sure. One of the things that excites me the most is how we can work faster, work more, but also get home on time and more quickly, but also take advantage of all the new digital technologies that are out there, that billions of people are carrying smartphones in their hand and have access to broadband as well. So we're really intrigued about digital therapeutics, digital medicines, and having the ability to help people in between sessions. I'm also personally looking forward to a lot of these other sessions that we're featuring on digital therapeutics for ADHD and as well as the latest on telepsychiatry, which covers all these important topics, how to prescribe over telehealth, especially with the ever-changing rules that we're already seeing with the Drug Enforcement Agency and controlled substances and the Ryan Haight Act. So a lot of these are really key topics that we'll have the latest news on and the latest research at Elevate.

Flowers: I think what's interesting about that is that I wasn't familiar with the fact that we were bringing in digital medicines or digital therapeutic practices. I was familiar, especially during the pandemic, when everyone went digital with respect to getting their therapeutic interventions, but I had no idea that it was going to be as specific as specific modalities that could support with ADHD or just different things like that. So it'll be really interesting to hear your talk as well. Amber, what about your talks?

Hoberg: So I've been practicing for 13 years. Most of my practice has been in long-term care and assisted living. So I'm going to get to bring the other side of the topic, which will be on cognitive disorders and delirium. Now, how do we determine the difference? When is it delirium, where we need to do some medical modalities and those are acute issues that we need to resolve versus cognitive disorders? So I'm going to talk about the four different types of dementias and how to determine the difference between the four. How do we look at these and determine what is going on with the patient? How do we treat them from the research perspectives, and how can we make a difference not only in the patients' lives, but also the lives of the families where they're dealing with this as well? How do we serve them in helping them through the process along with the patient?

Flowers: Okay. Wow. I love that. A question that I'm often asked when I'm on a panel and I'm talking about the work of preparing to present to other people and just the work of maintaining my business, and all of you all have mentioned that you have practices and you've been working and you're also going to be presenting, is about the self-care that I do to make sure that I'm in a position to be able to show up for other people. So I was wondering if some ... Well, let's do everyone. Everyone on the call, if you can share, what is your self-care practice to make sure that you have the energy and the strength and the power to be able to both run your practices and do your work, but also find the time to be able to research and prepare for presentations like the ones that you're going to be sharing?

Dr Chepke: Well, I'll jump in since-

Flowers: You can start.

Dr Chepke: Yeah. So for me, one thing that I have told every patient that I've ever worked with is that sleep's the foundation of mental health. Without a good foundation, your whole house is going to crumble. That's something that I do try to practice what I preach. My body is one that wakes me up at probably no later than 5:00 every day. I come from generation after generation of farmers, so I'm just, I think, epigenetically programmed to wake up that early, even though I've never milked a cow or had to collect eggs that early in the morning.

So that means in order to get the right amount of sleep, I've got to go to bed at a fairly early time and making sure to try to protect that. It's really easy to get caught up with staying up late to do X, Y, Z. But for me, it's really important that I do try to get into bed at a reasonable hour, because I know that I can't sleep in. That's just not the way my body works. So I've got to try to be diligent about that to the best of my ability. I typically do a pretty decent job, although I've got to tell you, when it's conference time, then it becomes very difficult, because there are some late nights at conferences, especially when they're in Vegas, right?

Flowers: Yes, yes. Especially when they're in Vegas. I love it. Sleep hygiene is also critical to my self-care as well, so I'm happy that you mentioned that. What about you, Amber?

Hoberg: Well, for me, I am very similar to Craig, where I get up very early in the morning. I have five children. So on top of all the work that I do, taking care of my kids is also very important to me and being with my family. So the way that I prepare is I am a big positive affirmation person, and I get up early in the morning and do my positive affirmations. I work on that for over an hour every single day. It's a diligent thing that I've been doing for the last eight years, going into myself, because how can I be a teacher to others if I don't have positive thoughts about myself or being able to do things from my perspective? So that's a very important thing for me, is to get up every morning, do my little devotional studies, my positive affirmations, and be ready to conquer the day. So that's a lot of my self-care in what I do every single day.

Flowers: I love that. Love that, and for you, Steve?

Dr Chan: Some of the things I love to do is just to make sure my own digital life is organized and kept clean. So I feel like there's a good sense of control over how things are influencing me positively and reducing the negatives. So Craig talked about things to help with sleeping. So I love checking sleep tracking functions on my phone and my watch. I also have organized things on my phone so that I watch more positive things, like baby animal videos and puppies and stuff like that. So actually, it makes me feel happy, too. So those are just some of the sampling things I've been doing for my self-care. Not only that, but also you, Stacey, you yourself have a YouTube channel. You've talked about your morning routine, and just watching that is also inspiring to me, too. So I can learn from people like yourself on how they go about their day, but wanted you to actually throw the question back to you, Stacey. What is your self-care practice? What kind of things invigorate you?

Flowers: Yeah. One of the things that I talk to when I talk to people about self-care is when it first got popular, people always talked about how it was lighting a candle and taking a bath. But I live in Chicago, which is a major city, and most of the apartments don't have bathtubs, because we have high rises, right? So it would frustrate me that so many people thought that the best way to practice self-care was to take a bath, but not a lot of people had access to bathtubs. So I remember diving into the research, and what I came out with was this idea that self-care is really knowing, liking, loving, and trusting yourself and from that place finding practices that support you, continuing to know yourself, support you continuing to like yourself, continuing to trust yourself, and continuing to love yourself.

So probably my top self-care practice that I do every day, no matter what, and you mentioned this a little bit, in my morning routine is I do a gratitude walk every single morning. When I was in the thick of my anxiety and depression and coming out of my experience with nervous exhaustion, I used to walk anywhere from I would say 45 to 60 minutes, just saying out loud, "I am so happy and grateful for" ... Then I would insert something that I have or something that I wanted to come. In the beginning, especially with the nervous exhaustion that I experienced, things were so frazzled, and my anxiety and my depression was to such a degree that I was a little bit ... I think the word is agoraphobic. I might be making that up, the one where you are afraid to go outside. Is that agoraphobic? Okay, perfect. All right. You're on the call with people who know the title. So of course you guys ...

Right, and I was a little bit afraid to go outside. So in the beginning, I would do the practice in my house. I would just walk in my hallway and just say, "I'm so happy and grateful that I can breathe. I'm so happy and grateful that I have lungs. I'm so happy and grateful that I can walk, that I can talk." Then when I was finally able to go outside and I was in those 45- to 60-minute sessions, then I got a little bit broader. It's like, "Okay. I'm happy and grateful for my liver and my lungs and my kidneys." Then I was happy and grateful for my health, which wasn't fully there yet, happy and grateful for my therapist, happy and grateful, and I just continue to express that.

I've always been very grateful, but for me, there was something very powerful about engaging the movement of my body, also being outside in nature. Then to Amber's point, saying that positive affirmation out loud, that has been completely transformative to me. When I think about the definition of self-care, knowing, loving, and trusting yourself, what I know about myself is that I heal really well through talking out loud. This is why psychiatry and therapy and podcasting and YouTube work so well for me, because I heal very well through speaking the thing that I'm thinking about.

For those of you guys who might be listening to the podcast, you might not have the 15, 20 minutes to go out and walk, or maybe your sleep hygiene is a little bit off, or maybe you don't know where to begin with cleaning up your digital space, or you're not yet ready for those positive affirmations. It's like you can take from each of our self-care practices and incorporate a little. Maybe if you don't want to walk, you journal a statement today. "I'm happy and grateful for," and you insert something, or maybe today you just get an extra hour of sleep or you go to bed a little bit or earlier or you Google sleep hygiene, because it'll blow your mind, or you Google how to organize your digital space just so you can incorporate a little bit of more self-care, because I do think that it is critical to our mental health.

So thank you for throwing that question back. Yeah, I saw a lot of your faces lighting up when I was expressing that. Is this something that comes up a lot in your practices with clients or patients who are having challenges with their self-care?

Hoberg: Absolutely. Comes up all the time in my practice. A lot of times, that's what causes sometimes depression and anxiety, is just going and going and going and giving to everybody else and not giving back to themselves. So not only do I talk to them about how we can help them from their anxiety or their depression standpoint, but also how are we going to help them with their self-care? What are some things? So I set goals. So I get my patients to come up with what are the top five things that we want to work on this week for your self-care?

So we'll come up with five things, and then I'll say, "Okay. Next time I see you in two weeks, we're going to talk about which one of these you got done or how many of these you got done." What blows me away is that as we continue to talk about this and set goals for my patients, what starts to happen is they start to get all five of them done, because they start to really enjoy giving back to themselves. Then they realize how much that helps them give back to others. So I love that you say those things, because I think it's super important to do.

Dr Chepke: Well, and one thing I loved is that people a lot of times will say in my practice they don't have time to do self-care. Then some people might be from situations and backgrounds that they have a lot of disadvantages, and just be in gratitude just for the fact that you can walk, for your lungs, for your liver. Just the simple things I think are really powerful, because there's always things that we can be grateful for, and having that attitude of gratitude is just immensely powerful, but really underestimated, I think, by most people who tend to seek us out as professionals.

Flowers: Yeah, and you said something really critical. I want to bring this up as we begin to wrap up the podcast, and you said people don't feel like they have time. They may not feel like they have time as it relates to their self-care practice, but as it relates to this event, this amazing opportunity for early career, people in the profession to come in, they may be thinking to themselves right now, "I don't have time to attend the event. I don't have time to take out of my already busy schedule of being someone who's serving my family, someone who's serving my clients, someone who's serving my patients to come." What would be the thing that you would say? I'll start, because I'm just throwing this out to you guys right now. What would be the thing that you would say to anyone who's listening to us right now to help them understand that making time for this event is going to give them that time that they may need for their self-care practice or that thing that they're missing from their profession?

I'll start. Anytime I'm encouraging people to come out to an event, an event that is being hosted, especially something like this, where it is focused on service providers, the thing that I say often is that if you don't ... Let me start over. Not if you don't, because I don't like speaking in the negatives usually, either. The thing that I say often is that making the time for yourself is going to be the best investment that you ever make. The part of you that wants to serve all of the people that are in your practice, the part of you that wants to serve your family, the part of you that wants to do that, that is a beautiful, extraordinary, exceptional part of who you are. But to sustain that part of who you are, you have to invest in yourself.

Coming to conferences like this, where co-chairs have organized speakers on topics that are going to help you move your practice forward or help you to understand what to do so that you can continue to grow and you can begin to network with different people who you may not have ever had an opportunity to expect, being in the room where all of that is happening is an investment in yourself.

Often people who are in this profession invest in themselves last, because they have the belief that they don't have time. But the truth is you don't have time not to. This is an investment in you, and that is the most important investment in order for you to continue to do this extraordinary work. So I would encourage you to come out so you can see what it's like when you invest in yourself, and you can see what fruit you bear from that. Anyone else who's ready, you can share why you think people should come out.

Dr Chepke: Yeah, absolutely. So making those networking connections that can help you, learning new techniques that can help to save you time in the future. But I want to spin it to give it an analogy in the surgery world. Before any surgery, there's something called the timeout. The surgeons, the techs, the nurses, everybody is just, "Go, go, go, go, go." But they call timeout right before the surgery's about to start to take a step out of their normal routine, to say, "Are we operating on the right body part? Do we have everything correct?" before they dive in.

Coming to a conference is like taking a timeout like that. We get so wrapped up in our own routine of we're doing things, we're doing things, we're so busy, and if you can push pause, take the time out, and come to the conference, it can help you to see some things differently, because sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees. We need that change in perspective and just that forced time away that it can be really helpful to come back in and maybe look at your routine a different way and look at how you're going about your day-to-day in a way that can be refreshing and reinvigorating and rejuvenating and can hopefully help combat the burnout that is just so prevalent amongst so many healthcare professionals in general and certainly amongst mental health professionals. So that's one way that I would take a look at it. Think of it like a surgical timeout. You've got to do this for yourself.

Hoberg: I want to add on the burnout thing, because that's one thing that came to mind when I think about it, is we as mental health professionals, we pour into so many people. What starts to happen is we start to burn out, and then we start to lose our passion. So that's one thing that this conference does, is it reinvigorates you and gives you back that passion to be able to go back and pour into your patients even more and helps you take that fizzling candle at the end and reinvigorate and make it burn brighter so that you can really help more people and do better in our field.

Also, what I find is you never know where you're going to utilize this information. I can't tell you how many times I've been on vacation or I've been in the airport and see people that have certain things that I've learned and be able to share that with other individuals, not just people in my practice, but also people that I share space with sometimes when I'm in different environments. So you never know where you're going to utilize this information. It may not always be in your patient space, but it may be in other spaces that you find yourself in on a day-to-day basis.

Dr Chan: I also want to chime in, too. I think that this is an incredible opportunity to combat the epidemic of loneliness that the surgeon general has been saying has been a big issue. This also goes for a professional life, too. Who are your coaches? Who are your mentors? Who are your peers? This is why we're so excited to have you, Stacey. These are the exact people that Stacey has talked about in her TEDx talk on the most important people that you need to have in your life. So if you've not been having those kinds of people who are supporting your professional growth, but also your own ability to care for yourself so that you can continue giving and helping others, that's the kind of thing that I like about this conference, is that who knows? You might find that peer. You might find that mentor. You might find that coach and so forth, and not to mention being amongst friends, right?

Dr Chepke: Or you might find that you might be the mentor for someone else, that you might be the coach for someone else, and you might develop a strength that you didn't know you had, because we all have things that we can teach to each other and to mentor each other along. So I love seeing that some people come in thinking that they're looking for a coach and they become a coach to someone else, because there's always someone with less experience or different needs.

We all have something so valuable to share, and to be able to pay forward some of the things that I got from people earlier on in my career is one thing that really drives me to be a part of Psych Congress in this way, is that so many people helped lift me up along the way to get me here. Like I said, I started off as an attendee, then became a speaker, and then now co-chair and scientific advisor. I didn't do that on my own, not by a mile. So now that I'm in this position, I want to pay that forward to other people and try to help lift them up.

Flowers: Right. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So if you all are listening right now and you're still thinking about whether or not you want to attend, I want you to attend, because there's going to be more connections, more happiness, an opportunity to learn how to overcome your burnout and to not experience the loss of passion. These are just a handful of the reasons why we want to see you there. I especially want to see you there, because I really do want to say thank you for you choosing this career. If you're thinking about going, the co-chairs have been so generous as to give you a discount through a code. You just use my last name, Flowers, when you check out, and you'll get a discount. I can't wait to see you in Vegas. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.

Steven Chan, MD, MBA, (@StevenChanMD, www.stevenchanMD.com), is a clinical informaticist and addiction psychiatrist serving as clinical assistant professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Chan is co-investigator on clinical research — on UC Davis asynchronous telepsychiatry and UCSF ADviCE Health, a digital health evaluation and outcomes platform. And, he co-founded AsyncHealth, a digital mental health startup spun out of the University of California. Dr. Chan is a sought-after national speaker whose ideas, thoughts, and research have been featured at Fortune 500 companies such as Google; publications such as JAMA, Telemedicine and e-Health, and JMIR (Journal of Medical Internet Research); and on media outlets including the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Wired, and PBS. Dr. Chan serves on the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s Committees on Telepsychiatry and Mental Health Information Technology, and chairs the APA's Committee on innovation. You can check out his podcast and writings on mental performance, productivity, & success at Mental Power Hacks — @mpowerhacks.

Craig Chepke, MD, DFAPA, is a board-certified psychiatrist and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He attended NYU School of Medicine and completed his residency training at Duke University. Dr. Chepke is the medical director of Excel Psychiatric Associates in Huntersville, NC as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry for Atrium Health. Dr. Chepke has special interests in Serious Mental Illness, movement disorders, ADHD, and sleep medicine. As part of an interdisciplinary treatment team, he employs a person-centered care model to tailor treatments to each individual's needs, integrating traditional pharmacotherapy with psychotherapeutic and physical health and wellness interventions. He is a member of the Huntington Study Group and serves on the board of directors for the CURESZ foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people living with Schizophrenia.

Stacey Flowers, MA, is an international speaker, author and, creative consultant who will make you happy. Born and raised in Omaha, NE, Flowers has successfully navigated the world as both a professional and serial entrepreneur publishing her first book, Pregnant With Purpose, in 2012. Before internationally speaking, she honed her talents by designing and delivering training programs for Fortune 500 companies. She earned her Master’s in Human Resources from Loyola University Chicago and her Bachelor’s in Paralegal Studies from College of Saint Mary. She is distinguished by her uncommon talent for addressing issues of humanity with a deep sense of compassion and practicality that encourages individual transformation. In addition to her speaking circuit ,Stacey is the founder & president of The Flowers Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to making positive, permanent behavior change accessible to all. Stacey shares her unshakable optimism with all who will listen via her social platforms and podcast. She speaks around the globe with the bold goal to inspire you to let yourself be happy.

Amber Hoberg, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC, is a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner from University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. She has been working for the past 12 years with the adult and geriatric populations treating all types of psychiatric conditions. Her background, as a Psychiatric Advanced Practice Nurse, includes outpatient, inpatient, group home, and nursing home/ALF settings. Her duties included: psychiatric evaluations, brief psychotherapy, and medication management for individuals with chronic mental illness, cognitive impairments, and intellectual disabilities. She currently
works for Baptist Health System and Morning Star Family Medicine PLLC treating the chronically mentally ill in both inpatient and outpatient settings.