Fall is here, and so is my favorite season of work

Fall is here, and so is one of my favorite recurring projects: Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky's annual conference in Lexington. This will be my third year graphic recording for them, and it's become one of the fall engagements I look forward to most. Hundreds of attendees social workers, teachers, law enforcement, and people with lived experience — travel from across the state to be in community around one shared goal: keeping Kentucky's children safe, sheltered, fed, and educated. Over three days, I capture the keynote speakers live, build a knowledge wall from a prompt question posed to the whole room (this year, fittingly, "What is your vision for children in 30 years?" as they mark their 30th anniversary), and graphic record a hands-on workshop where about 30 parents and social workers learn from each other and sketch out a better future together.

Live graphic recording of Justice Pamela Goodwine’s keynote address at last year’s Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky Conference.

What keeps me coming back — and what I think keeps them inviting me back — is what graphic recording does for a room like this. When you bring together people doing such emotionally heavy, high-stakes work, the ideas move fast and the connections between them can get lost. A live visual gives that thinking somewhere to land. It turns a keynote into something people can revisit, turns a wall of sticky notes and half-formed hopes into a shared vision they can point to, and turns a workshop's worth of insight into a mural that keeps working long after everyone's gone home. [Above is a look at last year's keynote illustration] and [below last year's mural from the Parent Engagement workshop] — a small taste of what three days of this work adds up to.

Mural created live at the 2025 Parent Engagement Summit

Fall is my busiest season, and I still have a few openings before the calendar fills up. If you're planning a conference, training, or community gathering this fall or winter and want your ideas captured in a way people actually remember, let's talk. Whether it's a single keynote or a multi-day event like PCAK's, I'd love to help your group see its own thinking come together on the wall.