Countdown To The Conference

Meet Jones Loflin

Jones Loflin helps leaders and teams cut through distractions, overcome overload,clarify priorities, and focus on the right work at the right time. He specializes in leadership development, time management, and change management. With more than 30 years of experience, he has worked with organizations such as FedEx, Choice Hotels, Fidelity Investments, and the U.S. military. A keynote speaker, real-life beekeeper, and author of multiple books including Juggling Elephants, Jones is known for practical insights, memorable metaphors, and presentations that audiences remember and use.

More About Jones

Jones Loflin helps individuals, leaders, and teams cut through distractions, clarify priorities, and reduce burnout and overload. He specializes in leadership development, time management, and navigating change. His messages equip organizations to stay aligned, productive, and focused on what drives results. A keynote speaker, real-life beekeeper, and author of multiple books including Focused As A Bee, Juggling Elephants, and Always Growing, Jones uses familiar, visual metaphors—like the structure of a hive, role of a ringmaster, or the skills of a gardener—to make complex decisions easier to understand and apply. His sessions move beyond simply offering ideas. They give people a clear way to decide what deserves their attention, what can wait, and how to adjust when priorities shift. People leave his presentations with real-world strategies they can apply immediately and the confidence to decide what most needs their attention if they want to thrive in work and life. For more than 30 years, Jones has worked with organizations such as FedEx, Choice Hotels, Fidelity Investments, Clayton Homes, and the U.S. military to strengthen leadership, improve focus, and find greater opportunity in times of change. His approach helps individuals and teams make better decisions about how they invest their time and energy. Residing in North Carolina, Jones cherishes time with his wonderful wife Lisa, their two amazing daughters, two "really cool" sons-in-law and one perfect grandson.

Meet Dr. Payne

Dr. Payne has written or coauthored more than 50 books, including the bestselling A Framework for Understanding Poverty, now in its seventh edition with nearly two million copies sold. Her recent works include Emotional Poverty in All Demographics, the IPBA Gold Medal-winning Before You Quit Teaching, and Educating Students Experiencing Homelessness, Instability, and Disengagement: The Impact of the Autonomic Nervous System.

Her work with students experiencing homelessness and instability explores how the autonomic nervous system influences learning, behavior, and disengagement. It also examines how unstable resources, environmental demands, and the pressures of survival can affect students’ ability to navigate school, while providing educators with practical tools for supporting engagement, learning, and connection.

In 1996, Dr. Payne founded aha! Process, a publishing and consulting organization dedicated to helping individuals, families, schools, and communities better understand and address the challenges associated with poverty and instability. Through aha! Process, her work has reached audiences around the world, including Australia, China, Europe, India, North America, and Southeast Asia.

Throughout her career, Dr. Payne has focused on giving educators and communities practical strategies for creating stronger learning environments, helping individuals build sustainable resources, and supporting pathways toward long-term stability and growth.

Meet Dr. Stephen Sroka

Dr. Stephen Sroka failed the third-grade. He was raised in the “projects" by a single mother on welfare. In ES, he was mocked for having a crossed eye and a speech impediment. He was injured in a HS fight, and in a wheelchair for a year. Doctors said, “Listen to your teachers.” The more he listened, the smarter the teachers became. His HS counselor told him that he didn’t have the IQ to go to college, but he didn’t know that Steve had the I WILL. He learned to live with the gifts of ADHD and dyslexia. His struggles to become a teacher made him a better truancy and dropout prevention educator.

He went from the “projects” to being inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. He was awarded The Walt Disney American Outstanding Teacher of Health and received the Outstanding School Health Educator Award and Fellow status from the American School Health Association. He also received the William A. Howe award from ASHA. It is ASHA’s highest honor. He was named the Person of the Year for The International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention and received the first-ever School Health Leader Award from the American Public Health Association. Recently, he received the National Association of School Nurses 2025 President’s Recognition Award. He has been covered in Education Week, The New York Times, Campus Safety Magazine and K-12 DIVE. But his favorite “award” was when his then 6-year-old daughter told him he was smarter than Inspector Gadget.

He has worked in schools (and on Native American Reservations) for over 50 years, including teaching, administration, and providing crisis intervention for 30 years in the Cleveland Public Schools. He has keynoted many major educational conferences including NSBA, AASA, NASN, NASSP, NASRO, ALAS, The Navajo Nation, SST, DARE, SSWAA, STN EXPO, DEA, PTA, NASP, NEA, AFT, UNITY, US Dept of Ed, and others. 

He has traveled the world striving to reach, elevate and inspire with The Power of One message, how one person can make a difference. Steve had a cardiac arrest while presenting a school in-service. A principal, superintendent, two SROs and others saved his life and changed his message. He now talks about how you need The Power of Many, how it takes a team, to make a lasting difference. He believes that one person can make a lasting difference with the power of many, and that is his WHY for truancy and dropout prevention.

Today, he is an international speaker, author, consultant, and adjunct assistant professor, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, and president of Health Education Consultants.

Meet Mandy Benedix

Today, Mandy is the founder of Rooted Together, an organization devoted to cultivating hope, developing leadership, and inspiring lives that positively impact those around us. Through educational, corporate, and ministry speaking engagements, Rooted Together encourages individuals to live with purpose, resilience, and intentionality.  When she is not speaking, she is presenting the Smart Families program to parents, helping families build stronger connections and thrive together. On most weekends, you can find her at the Michael Jr. show, where she serves as emcee.

Mandy is the author of "Made to Impact" and has been called the “Hope Dealer” and “Connection Maker”—and those names capture the heart of who she is and what she does. Mandy lives in Pearland, Texas with her husband of 21 years, Curt, as well as the true leaders of their home, their two dogs, Jax and Max. Curt and Mandy have one son, Brady, who is a junior at Texas A&M University.  

Meet Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty

She is also co-founder and VP of INSA, CEO of Pivot Attendance Solutions, and past president of the International Association of Truancy and Dropout Prevention, giving her a rare vantage point across research, practice, and policy at once.

Her signature contribution, the Perception of School Social Bonding (PSSB) instrument, took fifteen years to develop and is now endorsed by the American Psychological Association. Grounded in Hirschi's Social Bond Theory and validated on more than 3,500 students, PSSB is the basis of an international pilot study spanning Poland, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, and England. Her companion instruments and frameworks, including the Family Stability Construct and the PRESENCE research model, have carried her work past 1,700 Google Scholar citations and 310,000 views and downloads across more than 160 countries.

Gentle-Genitty led the founding conference of Attendance USA in May 2025, convening more than twenty scholars and policy leaders from Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and beyond to release a national manifesto on attendance and absenteeism. She has since built out a biennial Research to Practice Summit, a regular Indiana Attendance Science Institute, and a national platform for translating research into district-level and statewide practice.

Her core conviction drives all of it: people are not numbers, and systems succeed when they are built to understand why someone shows up rather than simply counting when they don't. That reframing, from blame to curiosity and from counting to understanding, is what makes her one of the most distinctive leadership voices in attendance and human participation today.

Meet Dr. Linda Pompa Villarreal

Dr. Villarreal previously served as Interim Dean of the College of Education and Human Performance at Texas A&M University–Kingsville, where she continues to serve students as a clinical professor. She is also the co-founder of Ed-Point, LLC, an educational consulting firm that supports educators and school systems in creating organizations focused on excellence, effective leadership, and high-quality learning for every student.

Her distinguished career includes serving as Executive Director of the Education Service Center, Region 2, as well as a superintendent of schools, campus principal, and classroom teacher. She has trained and inspired educators across Texas and throughout the nation, always challenging them to remain champions for children and steadfast in the purpose of public education—transforming the lives of students.

Dr. Villarreal has also served as an adjunct professor for Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi and Louisiana State University Shreveport. In addition, she recently served as a member of the Del Mar College Board of Regents.

Known for her passion, energy, and servant leadership, Dr. Villarreal believes that education is not simply a profession—it is a calling. Of all the roles she has held, her greatest joys are being an educator, wife to Juan, mother to Carlos, and grandmother to Benjamin and Ava.

Overview

Founded in 2020 by top engineers from Silicon Valley, Edia supports 200+ school districts across the U.S., from large urban systems like NYC, San Francisco, and Denver to remote rural schools in Alaska accessible only by seaplane or boat. The company’s mission is to ensure every student has an exceptional school experience.

Core Capabilities

AI-Driven Attendance Insights: Identifies patterns in absences, flags transportation barriers, and suggests targeted interventions. For example, Edia can pinpoint bus route gaps and recommend adding stops to reach students who miss early buses.

Math Performance Support: Integrates with math curricula and assessments to track progress and tailor interventions.

MTSS Integration: Helps districts implement and monitor multi-tiered support systems for students with diverse needs.

Two-Way Communication: Offers AI chat tools for educators to connect with families, improving engagement and response times.

How It Works

Edia pulls data from multiple sources — student information systems (SIS), learning management systems (LMS), attendance logs, and more — to generate actionable insights. It can:

Highlight at-risk students early.

Suggest personalized interventions.

Provide district-level dashboards for monitoring trends and outcomes.

Impact

School leaders report measurable improvements, such as 7% higher first-semester passing rates after implementing Edia’s tools. Educators praise its ability to close the “day a student is absent is a day of learning we can’t get back” gap by enabling real-time, targeted support.

Company Profile

• Headquarters: San Francisco, California 
• Employees: 51–200
• Industry: Education, EdTech
• Specialties: AI for education, attendance, math, MTSS, chronic absenteeism
• Website: edia.app

Overview

Attendance Plus provides proactive, tier-based outreach to help schools connect with students and families before attendance concerns become chronic. Automated compliance workflows help districts generate truancy letters and maintain audit trails based on their own attendance thresholds and processes, while two-way family communication allows families to respond to attendance notices in their preferred language.

By bringing attendance outreach, intervention, compliance, and family communication together on a platform families already use and trust, ParentSquare helps districts save staff time while building a stronger culture around the importance of showing up to school.

Key Features

Real-time attendance tracking with immediate visibility into student attendance trends and risks.

Automated interventions — when a student reaches a threshold, the system notifies the right people and triggers the appropriate steps.

Streamlined documentation — standardized, centralized records eliminate manual entry and keep all interventions logged automatically.

Two-way communication — timely, bi-directional messaging with parents and families to address issues before they become serious.

Data analysis — connects every intervention to an outcome, helping districts identify what’s working and where to focus.

Engagement tools — integrated communication and collaboration features to strengthen relationships and reduce absenteeism.

Benefits for Schools

Early intervention to stop small absences from becoming chronic.

Consistency across multiple campuses, ensuring uniform responses to attendance issues.

Evidence-based decision-making with accessible dashboards for campus leaders.

Positive culture building through recognition and reward systems for good attendance.

Testimonials

District leaders report that RaaWee:

Makes attendance data “front and center” and immediately available.

Streamlines the attendance intervention process.

Improves parent communication and confirmation of notifications.

Is considered a “premier attendance improvement platform” by other districts.

How to Learn More

You can explore RaaWee’s solutions, request a demo, and read case studies and white papers on their official website raaweek12.co. The platform is marketed as America’s smartest attendance improvement platform for chronic absenteeism, truancy, and tardiness.

If you’re a school district leader or administrator looking to improve attendance and student engagement, RaaWee offers a comprehensive, integrated approach to attendance management.

Their holistic model integrates academic, emotional, and mental health support, recognizing that “education starts with the heart, then moves to the mind”.

Services Offered

Accredited online and in-person programs

Certified instructor support

One-to-one mentoring

Academic guidance and intervention

Diverse tutoring options

English language support

College & career readiness assistance

Skills/trade certification pathways

Trauma-informed life coaching

Referrals to other educational and community resources 

Partnerships and Reach

Graduation Solutions partners with parents, educators, legislators, and other organizations to create “graduation success stories” for individual students. They have a proven track record of helping thousands of students earn their diplomas since 2012.

Contact Information

Email: info@studentswin.org

Phone: (480) 689-5999

Main Office: 1555 N. Fiesta Blvd, Gilbert, AZ 85233 

If you are a school, district, or individual seeking alternative graduation pathways, Graduation Solutions offers a framework to tailor education to each student’s needs, ensuring they can succeed in their own way.