Every one of us will, at some point, be a caregiver. For most of us, that role is blessedly short-lived. Taking care of a child with a cold or flu. Helping your spouse with a broken arm. Assisting mom around the house after a fall. For others, care-giving becomes an all-consuming purpose that dominates every moment of our life. Melody Vachal has not only lived the caregiver life for more than 30 years for her son with significant disabilities, she was also a care receiver for 10 years in the middle of it all following a serious car accident. And yet she thrives. Melody is a keynote speaker, author, and creator of the Space for GRACE™ framework. Drawing from her lived experiences on both sides of caregiving and from her career as a speech-language pathologist and health and wellness coach, Melody helps people move from surviving to rising. She is the author of the Amazon bestselling book Still I Rise: A Guide to Navigating the Caregiver Journey and speaks about resilience, intentional communication, caregiving, and finding hope in life’s most challenging seasons. Learn more about Melody Vachal at https://melodyvachal.com, check out her Speaker Reel, and connect with her on Linked In, Facebook and Instagram.

Saved by the lathe. After suffering a stroke, Chip Scholz found healing and inspiration in his love of woodturning. A speaker, author, and executive coach, Chip primarily helps family businesses in transition and finds that the same skills and intuition he uses in woodworking can be used to understanding the uniqueness of each family business and guiding them through a transition process. He notes that in both cases, “you can’t force the cut.” In a world often overshadowed by negativity, Chip brings a refreshing perspective on family businesses and the importance of the human element in transitions. He shares enlightening stories drawn from his extensive experience, highlighting the unique challenges faced by family-run enterprises, and how the careful patience needed to create beautiful, useful, and artful pieces out of wood are just as important in business. Learn more about Chip at https://www.scholzandassociates.com, connect with him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chipscholz/ or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Chippturns, and look for his books, Every Dog Has Its Day, Small Decisions Big Shifts and the upcoming Handoffs (expected in October 2026).

For more than 20 years, Charles Fowler has chaired the Human Values Foundation, which promotes positive values in young people’s social and emotional development. He notes that our values, which we adopt during the formative years of our youth, become our behavioral and ethical guides in life. Research shows that a vast majority of people have positive values, including things like love, gratitude, compassion, yet that same majority claims that other people and society in general don’t seem to share the same values, and in fact, tend toward more negative values, exhibiting selfishness, hate, and discrimination. Charles has been working across global boundaries to address that disconnection. He is the driving force behind World Values Day, an annual campaign that culminates on the third Thursday in October, which encourages individuals and organizations around the world to put positive values into practice. This year, World Values Day is celebrated on October 15th, but these lessons and practices should be carried forward into daily routine. Witha never-ending supply of energy and passion for encouraging positive values, Charles also chairs the Global Alliance for Values-based Education (GAVE), a network of leading academics and educationalists, is project partner of the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice for Health and Social Care at Oxford University, and serves as a delegate at the Values20 Group which engages the annual G20 leaders summits. Follow and get involved in World Values Day activities at https://www.worldvaluesday.com/ and learn about the Global Alliance for Values-based Education at https://gave.global/. Charles welcomes connections on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-fowler-b74987104/