Kristina Jones is an award winning advertising art director turned tech entrepreneur. When Kristina Jones was looking for the next tech company to build after scaling courtbuddy.com (now Lawchamps) nationwide, raising $7.5 Million in funding, and becoming the 14th African American woman to ever raise more than $1 Million from VCs for a tech startup, she started with a personal story. When Kristina was seven, her father died from cancer and she knew one day she wanted to share her story on how she kept the connection to her dad alive. Throughout the process of writing and editing, "My Forever Guardian", she noticed the immense lack of online support for the millions of grieving children here in the US. After connecting with the nation's best grief counselors and getting feedback from over 500 grieving parents, she quickly got to work building Guardian Lane, a children's mental health platform that is innovating how children access grief counseling. With the use of video sharing technology, community, tele-counseling and a whole lot of creativity, the children have begun to build their own social healing network. Guardian Lane has partnered with over 1,000 schools since it's beta launch in late January and is growing into new districts daily! Kristina's work has been featured in Vanity Fair, Forbes, CNN Business, Inc., Entrepreneur, Essence, Black Enterprise and more. 

LaTisha Johnson is a 5x Emmy Nominated Producer, an author, speaker and a mom.

For over 15 years she’s worked in television as a producer on such shows as:

Hallmark Channel's “Home and Family”

Animal Planet's “Pitbulls and Parolees”,

Sesame Street's "Workshops"

Dr. Phil

Latisha produces Guardian Lane's video projects. Latisha helps source, interview and get our experts camera ready to translate their in-person projects to video for Guardian Lane.

Dr. Merenda is a featured grief counselor at Guardian Lane. Dr. Merenda has more than 15 years of experience in early learning and therapeutic settings. Her background is in early childhood education, with a specific expertise in therapeutic play and supporting families with children who have special needs. Dr. Merenda holds a Masters of Art in Early Childhood Studies from Ryerson University and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Western University. In addition to her experience at the University of Guelph-Humber, Dr. Merenda has taught academic courses at Humber College ITAL, she was the Program Advisor for a continuing education stream of the Early Childhood Education program at Humber College ITAL. Dr. Merenda is perfect for grief related questions.