CVNL Partnered with Staglin Family, Provided 100+ Volunteers for Music Festival for Brain Health

The Staglin Family celebrated advances in science and a new financial milestone at the 23rd annual Music Festival for Brain Health on September 16th in the Napa Valley. This year’s efforts raised nearly $5.5 million to benefit ONE MIND™. In addition, the Staglin family and the ONE MIND Board of Directors announced that the 23-year cumulative total, including direct contributions and leveraged funds provided to scientists as a result of initial research funding from festival proceeds, has surpassed $280 million dollars since 1995. ONE MIND has become the nation’s leading private-public mental health organization dedicated to curing brain-related diseases, including depression, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury and bi-polar illness, focusing on issues including funding, research, advocacy, open science principles, and anti-stigma.

Co-hosts Shari and Garen Staglin, along with their children Brandon and Shanon, Congressman Mike Thompson, Pete Chiarelli, CEO of ONE MIND, and the One Mind Board of Directors welcomed over 500 supporters, scientists, and friends on a beautiful late summer afternoon to celebrate life and raise awareness of the causes and cures for physiological brain disorders. Center for Volunteer & Nonprofit Leadership (CVNL) helped support the event by recruiting and managing over 100 volunteers. Said Jim Tomlinson, Office Manager, Napa:

CVNL was honored to help support this event. We were selected to coordinate and oversee volunteers for their 22nd annual Music Festival, and feel the experience was once again a huge success.

The 23rd Anual festival began with a scientific symposium, moderated by Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, featuring keynote speaker Dr. Joshua A. Gordon, MD, PhD, Director for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Dr. Gordon spoke on his vision for the NIMH’s leadership in national mental health research and on the essential role of public-private partnerships to advance this research. Also featured was Samuel McLean, MD, emergency medicine physician and Jeffrey Houpt Distinguished Investigator at the University of North Carolina. Dr. McLean, as Principal Investigator of the AURORA Study – a collaborative national study supported by the NIMH and ONE MIND – spoke on how the scientific and medical communities can better understand disabling brain changes that occur in response to traumatic events.

Stated Garen Staglin:

The support we continue to receive that funds these important scientific discoveries is amazing. As we near a quarter of a century with this effort, we are beginning to see the breakthroughs that will unlock the mysteries of the brain and make a difference in so many lives.

A symposium highlight was the announcement of the 2017 Rising Star Awards, which are sponsored by ONE MIND and Janssen Research & Development, LLC. These $250,000 awards identify and fund pivotal, innovative research on the causes of and cures for brain disorders. The ONE MIND Scientific Advisory Board has chosen Alik S. Widge, M.D., Ph.D., to receive the 2017 ONE MIND/Janssen Rising Star Translational Research Award in Honor of the late Jeffrey S. Nye, M.D., Ph.D., and Ian Maze, Ph.D., to receive the 2017 ONE MIND Rising Star Early Diagnostics Basic Research Award. The Rising Star Awards have become among the most prestigious a young scientist can receive.

Following the symposium, a tasting of 75 of the world’s most acclaimed wines took place in the Staglin Family Vineyard winery caves, with hors d’oeuvres provided by Chef Nash Cognetti of Tre Posti in St. Helena. The party continued when singer, composer and actor Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Group took the stage for an intimate concert among the Staglin Vineyard vines. A musical highlight included an invitation by Lovett to have Brandon Staglin join his band to perform a crowd-pleasing original song he wrote on living with schizophrenia. The post-concert, four-course gourmet dinner was served outdoors with perfect weather and featured the cuisine of legendary Napa Valley Chef Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustards Grill and Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen paired with Staglin Family Vineyard wines.

In addition, at an enthusiastic session during the dinner following heartfelt personal stories, ONE MIND raised over $435,000 to support the AURORA study, whose goal is determine the causal factors for post-traumatic stress conditions and more accurate diagnostics and treatments.

The date for the 24th Anual Music Festival for Brain Health has been set for Saturday, September 15, 2018.

For more information, please call Cindy Dyar at (707) 963-4038 or email cindy@onemindinstitute.org, or visit www.music-festival.org, #Music4BrainHealth.

Broadcast quality video available here.

300 DPI digital images available here. 

About ONE MIND™

One Mind Institute and ONE MIND have joined forces to focus our energy and resources to support research programs that represent the highest standards of collaboration. ONE MIND’s vision is healthy brains and strong minds for all. Fueled by a belief in open science principles and creating global public-private partnerships, ONE MIND’s mission is to radically accelerate cures for brain illnesses and injuries by funding and fostering paradigm-shifting scientific research collaborations and initiatives. ONE MIND is dedicated to benefitting all affected by brain illness and injury through fostering fundamental changes that will radically accelerate the development and implementation of improved diagnostics, treatments and cures. Working together, our hopes for the future of brain health are within reach. Together, we are now ONE MIND. www.onemindinstitute.org and www.onemind.org.