Directors & Advisors Emeriti

Directors & Advisors Emeriti are former members of a company’s board of directors and advisory committees who have assisted and advised Children’s Health Defense.

Professor Luc Montagnier, M.D., Ph.D

Nobel Prize Recipient, Co-founder CHRONIMED, President of the World Foundation for Aids Research and Prevention
Professor Luc Montagnier graduated in both Medicine and Biological Sciences at the University of Paris. At the age of 23, he became Assistant at this University. After a fruitful post-doctoral stay in two British laboratories, he spent most of his scientific career in two renowned French Institutions, the Institut Curie and the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Within the new Department of Virology of the latter Institute, he founded the Viral Oncology Research Unit which devoted its activities to 1) the study of cancer viruses, mostly the oncogenic retroviruses and 2) the biochemical aspects of interferon and of malignant transformation, including membrane changes in relation with the growth in soft agar, a new property of cultured malignant cells.

In 1983, he led the team which first isolated the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV1) and brought the first evidence that this virus was the causative agent of AIDS. In 1985, he also isolated the second AIDS virus, HIV2, from West African patients. His laboratory was also the first to show that a large fraction of white blood cells of HIV infected patients were prone to die by apoptosis, a process of programmed cell death and to attribute its origin to the oxidative stress occurring in the patients, possibly associated with co-infections.

Professor Montagnier’s current studies are aimed at the diagnosis and treatment of microbial and viral factors associated with cancers, neurodegenerative and articular diseases, using innovative technologies. As a strong advocate of preventive medicine, he is especially concerned with prolonging the active life of aging people.

Beyond his scientific interest is his deep involvement with helping developing countries to acquire knowledge of and access to modern medicine and preventive medicine. As President of the World Foundation for Aids Research and Prevention, he has co-founded two Centers for the prevention, treatment, research and diagnosis of AIDS patients in Ivory Coast and Cameroon.

Ten years ago, Professeur Montagnier co-founded CHRONIMED, an international group of physicians treating chronic diseases, including but not limited to autism spectrum disorders, Alzheimers, Lyme, multiple scleroses, and cancer. Various treatment modalities are used for these multi-factorial conditions. Most of these treatments were developed upon the research of Montagnier and his Chronimed associates. Foundation Luc Montagnier in Geneva, Switzerland does cutting-edge research, bringing in international investigators in various fields. The Foundation has on its premises associated Chronimed clinicians.

Luc Montagnier has been awarded many prizes including Prizes Rosen (1971), Gallien (1985), Korber (1986), Jeantet (1986), the Lasker Prize in Medicine (1986), the Gairdner Prize (1987), Santé Prize (1987), Japan Prize (1988), King Faisal Prize (1993), Amsterdam Foundation Prize (1994), Warren Alpert Prize (1998), Prince of Asturias Award (2000) the induction to the National Invention Hall of Fame (2004). He is Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1986) and Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour (2009).

In 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, for his discovery of HIV, together with Françoise Barre-Sinoussi.

He is the author or co-author of 350 scientific publications and of more than 150 patents.

Ryan Blair

Ryan Blair is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker, serial entrepreneur and leading investor. Blair authored two books about his life as an entrepreneur: Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain, and Rock Bottom to Rock Star: Lessons From The Business School of Hard Knocks. He currently serves as founder of HashTagOne, a fast growing venture capital firm with several successful investments to date including Elite Daily, Heal, Fragmob and Saucey.

At the age of 21 years old, Blair founded his first business, 24/7 Tech. Known as a turnaround expert, he has since created and sold numerous other companies for hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his career.

Shortly after the 2008 recession and just one month from having to declare bankruptcy, Blair and his business partners personally invested in a new business model that would later revolutionize the direct selling industry. As CEO of healthy lifestyle company, ViSalus, Blair took the company from $39 million in revenue to surpassing $1 billion in total sales in just three years. After selling the company to Blyth, Inc. (NYSE: BTH) in 2012, Blair and his co-founders bought the company back in 2014. Blair then organized a leveraged buy out to take the company private. From 2014 to 2016, he restructured the business, turned it to profitability and sold a controlling interest to an investor group.

In 2011, Blair published the New York Times Best Seller, Nothing To Lose and Everything To Gain: How I Went From Gang Member To Multimillionaire Entrepreneur (now available in Paperback and translated in over 10 languages), an uncensored personal account of overcoming a life of adversity as an at-risk youth to a self-made multimillionaire by his early twenties. The book shares a road map for entrepreneurial success through the process of reinvention, while simultaneously facing the biggest professional challenge of his career: rescuing his company, ViSalus.

In 2016, Blair released his second book: Rock Bottom to Rock Star: Lessons from the Business School of Hard Knocks. As a follow up to the first book, Rock Bottom to Rock Star explores how fellow entrepreneurs can elevate their own careers and achieve financial independence, while avoiding the mistakes Blair made in the school of hard knocks.

Blair was named one of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurs of the Year in the “category for consumer products.” He regularly appears as a business expert in national television networks including Bloomberg, CNBC, MSNBC and Fox News. He has also been featured in major publications such as Fortune Magazine, BusinessWeek, Forbes Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and People Magazine. He also serves as Executive Producer for a number of films, including his own documentary: Nothing To Lose.

Blair currently resides in Los Angeles with his son, Reagan.

Sheila Ealey, Ed.D.

Director

Sheila Lewis Ealey is the founder and former director of the Creative Learning Center of Louisiana, where she served for ten years. It was a small therapeutic day school for severely affected children on the autism spectrum and children diagnosed with other nonverbal intellectual disabilities beginning at age 8. She is the wife of a former U.S. Coast Guard Officer, who spent more than 16 years of his 26 years of service traveling worldwide, supporting his love and duty to our country. She is also the mother of four children — three daughters, and her son, Temple — diagnosed with severe autism spectrum disorder at 18 months, and has a granddaughter. Temple is now a young man and considered moderate and emerging.

Over the past 20 years, Ealey has educated herself to use natural forms of healing the body and brain through diet, educational and therapeutic modalities and a gamut of biomedical treatments. Her formal education includes a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from St. Mary’s Dominican College, an MA in curriculum and instruction in special education grades K through 12 from Concordia University and a doctorate in educational leadership in special education grades K through 12 from Gwynedd Mercy University. She is certified as a DIR Stanley Greenspan Floortime practitioner, in Interactive Metronome and as a Fast Forward reading interventionist.

Sheila and her boy and girl twins, Temple and Lucinda, were featured in the documentary “Vaxxed.” She has traveled extensively, advocating for medical freedom as a Constitutionalist and inspirational speaker. She continues to educate disenfranchised parents about their fundamental rights to religious and philosophical exemptions, their ability to live sustainably off a limited budget and the importance of nutritional foods and biomedical interventions for optimum health after a diagnosis of autism or other learning disabilities such as ADD or ADHD. She also writes individual curriculums for parents of children with autism or intellectual disorders who choose to homeschool and is a trustee for the Autism Trust, USA.

Eric Gladen

Eric Gladen majored in Engineering at Oregon State University. A tragic life experience in 2004 would change his focus to storytelling through documentary films. Trace Amounts is the true story of his journey through mercury poisoning that he believes came from a thimerosal-loaded tetanus shot.

Rita Pasiciel

Rita Pasiciel lives and promotes healthy living. Born in Western Canada, she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy at University of Edmonton and her Masters in Education at University of San Diego. In addition to managing and operating her own businesses, she also taught in the US and abroad for over 20 years. Rita achieved recognition for excellence in operating a business from the government of Canada and was named person of the year by Time magazine in 2006. She is one of the original board members for Children’s Health Defense and enjoys running ultramarathons as well as coaching all ages to improve their fitness.

Alicia Silverstone

Outside of her acting career, Silverstone is committed to the causes of animal welfare and environmentalism. She became a vegan in 1998, and was named PETA’s “Sexiest Female Vegetarian” in 2004. Sharing the details of her lifestyle, Silverstone penned the 2009 book The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet.

Silverstone married rock musician Christopher Jarecki on June 11, 2005. The couple has one child, son Bear Blu Jarecki, who was born in 2011. Her experiences with her son inspired Silverstone to write The Kind Mama, which was released in 2014. Silverstone lives in an eco-friendly house in Los Angeles with her family.

Jenni Weinman

Jenni Weinman began her career right out of USC in 1999 working for Bragman Nyman Cafarelli, which is now, which is now PMKBNC. After a short stint in the product placement department she made the move to the talent department handling personal PR for actors and actresses. In the summer of 2000 she joined Susan Patricola at her firm Patricola Public Relations where she was Senior VP until she opened her own firm.

At the time, Weinman specialized in male TV actors and had stars of shows on every network by having clients on CSI, 24, The West Wing, That 70’s Show, Law & Order, Malcolm in the Middle and Buffy the Vampire Slayer all at the same time. With an itch of wanting more she quickly sought to sign new and up and coming talent in the feature film world, launching the careers of Chris Evans, Justin Long and DJ Qualls. (Who later officiated her wedding) Having built a reputation for dealing with strong, creative personalities, she then found herself working with Farrah Fawcett Mo’Nique and Martin Lawrence. To this day the majority of her clients have been with her 15 years or longer.

Being a fan of music she found herself at various shows usually accompanying one of her clients. It was through Danny Masterson that she met DJ AM. They quickly became friends and was eventually doing PR for him. Soon she became one of the most sought after publicists in the electronic and dance music community launching both DJ AM and DJ Paul Okenfold into their Las Vegas residencies at the Palms Hotel. AM had risen in popularity and was soon working with other high profile musicians including famed drummer, Travis Barker. AM and Barker soon created a musical act, TRV$DJAM which led to her representing Barker as well. Weinman has also worked on many projects including famed DJ mix Master Mike as well as cult pop icon Dirt Nasty (aka Simon Rex.)

Her musical roster currently includes Travis Barker, Blink 182, Steve Aoki, DJ Ztrip the rock duo Black Pistol Fire, and Porter Robinson among others

Evolving with the business Weinman currently has her own company the Current Co., which she launched three years ago. The Current Co. is a full scale PR firm that offers PR, crisis management, consulting, marketing strategy, messaging, branding and cause PR.

As an avid environmentalist she sits on the board of the Environmental Media Association, specifically the parents board and works closely with them on all of their projects. She’s has also been on numerous host committees for events for EWG as well as 5Gyers and The Surfrider Foundation.

Weinman lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and is expecting a son this December.

Lyn Redwood, R.N., M.S.N.

President Emerita

Ms. Redwood is the President Emerita of Children’s Health Defense. Initially, she served as President of the World Mercury Project in 2016. The organization expanded its mission in 2018 to become Children’s Health Defense.

Professionally, Ms. Redwood is a Nurse Practitioner with over 20 years’ experience in pediatrics and family medicine. She became involved in vaccine safety research and advocacy in 1999 when she calculated that her son had received 125 times the EPA Federal Safety guidelines for safe mercury exposure from his infant vaccines resulting in a diagnosis of autism.

In an effort to attract attention to the dangerous practice of using mercury in infant vaccines, she co-authored a landmark paper, “Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Toxicity” in 2000, linking the symptoms of autism with excessive exposure to mercury. She testified before the Government Reform Committee on “Mercury in medicine: Are we taking unnecessary risks?” before a subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, “Truth revealed: New scientific discoveries regarding mercury in medicine” in 2004.
Deleted: Ms. Redwood continued her advocacy through research publications in Neurotoxicology, Molecular Psychiatry, Expert Opinion in Pharmacotherapy, Journal of Medical Genetics and Medical Hypotheses. She participated in and formally reviewed the Institute of Medicine’s 2008 report “Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research.”

Ms. Redwood was appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the National Institutes of Health – Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, where she served as a public member from 2007-2014. She was also appointed as an inaugural Integration Panel Member for the Department of Defense, Autism Spectrum Disorder Research Program when the program was formed in 2007 and served for three years.

In 2010, she was awarded “Person of the Year” by Spectrum Magazine and was the recipient of the National Autism Association’s “Believe Award” in 2013.

Ms. Redwood co-founded the non-profit organizations SafeMinds in 2000 and served as the Executive Director and Director of Research until 2016 and the National Autism Association in 2003 where she is a Director Emerita.

Over the years, Ms. Redwood has appeared on multiple national news and television outlets including Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer, ABC Nightly News with Richard Besser, and the Montel Williams Show. She has been interviewed for featured stories by U.S. News and World Report, Wired Magazine, New York Times Magazine and is prominently featured in the award-winning book by David Kirby, Evidence of Harm.

Prior to her vaccine safety research and advocacy, Ms. Redwood served on her county’s Board of Health for 18 years and as a member of her local city council where she was recognized as “Person of the Year” for her dedication and service to her community.