Speakers

NO NOONTIME MEETING - CLUB SOCIAL

The Golden Valley Rotary Club will gather for a socially distant, outdoor club social with lawn bowling at Brookview. We all need safe, fun times with good people!

Tuesday, September 29, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Brookview Golden Valley
316 Brookview Pkwy S, Golden Valley, MN 55426

VIRTUAL MEETING

Rachel Williams has been a U.S. Postal Inspector since 2003, conducting investigations involving identity theft, mortgage fraud, investment fraud/schemes, Ponzi schemes, lottery/advance fee scams, internet/eBay/Paypal fraud, child exploitation, mail theft, and other financial crimes. Inspector Williams is currently assigned to the Mail Fraud Team for the State of Minnesota and is also the Public Information Officer for Minnesota and North Dakota. Inspector Williams will present on how identity theft, mail theft, and mail fraud impacts individuals both personally and professionally.

VIRTUAL MEETING

Julie Jonas is the Legal Director for the Innocence Project of Minnesota (IPMN). She has worked for IPMN since 2003. In addition to her work for the Project, she teaches at Minnesota law schools where her focus is on the prevention of wrongful convictions and working with clinical students to screen and investigate cases of potential innocence.

Jonas completed her undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Minnesota. After law school, she practiced with the Ramsey County Public Defender’s Office in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In her current position, she has successfully worked to secure the release of seven innocent men from prison who were incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. She also works on policy issues. Her work was instrumental in Minnesota’s passage of its 2014 Imprisonment and Exoneration Remedies Act awarding compensation to Minnesota exonerees. Under that law, she secured compensation for her innocent clients. In 2020, she worked to secure passage of a law that requires law enforcement throughout Minnesota to use best practices in conducting eyewitness identifications in order to increase reliability of identifications of actual perpetrators and decrease wrongful convictions.

VIRTUAL MEETING

Helene Johnson's career has focused on continuing and professional education in corporate, public, and nonprofit settings. She retired after 38 years as Executive Director of a small nonprofit which provided educational programs for local government decisionmakers, staff, and advisory commission members in Minnesota - as well as their collaborators. She has been a resident of Golden Valley since 1989, and began her volunteer involvement here in 2004 as co-facilitator for the Golden Valley visioning process supported by Rotary. She continued as a member of the Envision Connection Project Board, a Bridge Builder, and a founding board member of the Golden Valley Community Foundation, where she still serves. Helene started Global Golden Valley in 2012 as a way to highlight, celebrate, and connect those from different cultures in our city with other interested individuals. She has traveled extensively in various capacities (study abroad, sister city exchanges, and country to country partnerships, spouse of a group travel agent, lifelong learner) and believes strongly in the benefits of taking advantage of what the world has to offer, far away and in our own city!

Jeanne Weigum has served as the President of ANSR since 1980, though her path to leading the organization for nearly four decades has somewhat humble roots. The Association for Nonsmokers’ Rights, as it was called at the time, was in the midst of fighting for the nation’s first statewide clean indoor air law in 1975. Jeanne saw an ad in a local paper about the association’s work and decided to become a member, which only cost $1. After becoming a member, Jeanne soon joined the ANSR board and eventually moved her way up to the full-time President, a role for which she has never taken a salary. From ground-breaking smoke-free housing work to innovative approaches to preventing youth tobacco use, she has provided strategic direction for numerous public policy wins in Minnesota. She remains deeply committed to enhancing public health and her community. When not fighting the good fight at ANSR, you’ll find Jeanne baking in the winter, gardening in the spring and summer, and up to her ankles in rescue dogs year round.

David J. Willoughby is the chief executive officer of ClearWay Minnesota, which works to enhance life for all Minnesotans by reducing tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke through research, action, and collaboration. Willoughby also leads the Funder’s Alliance, a group of state foundation executive directors from across the country who work on tobacco control.

In 1975, ANSR helped pass the nation’s first comprehensive state clean indoor air legislation. Since then, ANSR has continued to play a leading role in shaping tobacco policy and has been involved in every major state-wide policy, such as the Freedom to Breathe Act in 2007 and raising the tobacco tax in 2013. ANSR helped Minneapolis and Saint Paul restrict the sales of flavored tobacco, including menthol, and also helped Edina become the first Minneapolis city to raise the tobacco sales age to 21.

The mission of ClearWay Minnesota is to enhance life in Minnesota by reducing tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke through research, action, and collaboration. They were created in 1998 and entrusted with overseeing 3 percent of the state’s tobacco settlement funds. ClearWay operates under the ongoing jurisdiction of the Ramsey County District Court. They use their portion of the settlement to help Minnesotans quit smoking and tobacco use,
and to fund tobacco-related research, programs, and initiatives around the state. ClearWay Minnesota works to raise people’s awareness of the dangers of tobacco and to make Minnesota a healthier place.