Carey Sipp

Carey Smith Sipp is the Director for Strategic Partnerships for PACES, Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences. She is a science, brain, health, and parenting enthusiast who learned about the ACE Study almost 20 years ago. As the Southeastern community facilitator for PACEs Connection, Carey uses four decades of experience as an award-winning writer, marketer, fundraiser, and campaigner to help PACEs initiatives in 11 states create communities on PACEsConnection.com, find resources, and leverage opportunities to take trauma-informed practices into new and existing sectors. She also supports interest-based groups, including PACEs in the Faith-Based Community and the Trauma Informed Healthcare Education and Research Group. As an PACEs Connection lead in communications and social media, she’s raising awareness of PACEs science across all sectors: government to healthcare; education to juvenile justice; airlines to zoos. Carey’s work has also included service on boards of directors for several non-profits supporting leadership development, nutrition, and underserved youth, and volunteering at residential treatment centers for mothers recovering from alcohol and drug abuse. Carey graduated with an MS in Communications (Journalism) from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Visit Carey's website: www.CareySipp.com

PACEs story: I grew up in addiction and abuse. When I had children, I vowed they would have a saner, calmer childhood than my own, so I joined a recovery group for family and friends of alcoholics, immersed myself in parenting education, and quit drinking, just in case. Somehow I knew children’s brains are wired for peace and calm or for agitation and addiction. In 1996, when I started working on a book about breaking cycles of addiction and abuse, I called the National Association for Children of Alcoholics for resources. In 2000, one of the pieces of information they sent was the ACE Study. I read it and wept. My score explained my health issues; my prognosis was grim. Instinctively, I delved deeper into recovery, spirituality, parenting, exercise, nutrition. A few years later, hope came when advances in brain science showed the brain has plasticity, the body wants to heal. In 2008 I started contributing articles about PACEs science to a medical information website. Five years later I met Jane Stevens, and five years after that, I was hired at PACEs Connection. My work comes full circle as I write about how PACEs lead to addiction and addiction leads to PACEs, and that PACEs science and trauma-informed communities hold solutions to preventing multi-generational cycles of addiction and abuse.