Paris Gramann (CEO/Co-Founder)

Paris Gramann has been working on mental health (for herself and others) for the past 5-6 years. As a student startup founder, Paris juggles her college courses, her business, and her difficult mental health challenges. Her passion for encouraging the conversation about mental health has advanced from realizing how many of her peers struggle with mental health challenges as well. Paris doesn't want anyone else to internally suffer from their mental health difficulties, so she is creating a solution.

Paris is an inquisitive learner, who seeks to gain the answers to any questions she finds in both her academic and personal career. She thrives off of interaction and collaboration and enjoys helping people reach their personal success. With her skills, she plans to help the community by empowering others to discover and pursue their passions.

Rebecca Lee (Co-Founder/Illustrator)

At a Drexel University Business Competition, where Paris won a $500 Idea Pitch talking about the book series, Rebecca Lee showed interest in the project. Rebecca, now Paris’ business partner, studies middle grade education at Temple University in Philadelphia. Rebecca is currently illustrating (original illustrations shown for MVP are from Luigi Manese) and co-authoring the book series with Paris, as well as leading product photoshoots for the Kickstarter (which comes out in August). Rebecca, dealing with her own mental health difficulties, continues to breathe passion into the Just Be Books products. Not only does she illustrate and do photography, but she is expanding customer research and strategy to get the Just Be Books Series into school districts and into classrooms.

You can find more of Rebecca’s work here.

Shannon Sweitzer (Advisor)

Shannon Sweitzer graduated with her Ph.D. in school psychology from Temple University. A Pennsylvania licensed psychologist as well as a Pennsylvania and Nationally Certified school psychologist, she specializes in the psychological, educational, and developmental assessment of children ages 3 to 19. Dr. Sweitzer has worked as both a school aged as well as an early childhood school psychologist in a large suburban school district. Her skill set is unique in that she has had extensive training and clinical experience assessing young children (ages 3 – 6). In addition to her private practice, Dr. Sweitzer is a clinical assistant professor in the school psychology program at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She teaches Theories of Learning, Personality Theory, Assessment of Behavior and Personality, and The Assessment of Young Children.

You can find out more about Shannon and her work here.

Ann Gerondelis (Advisor)

Ann Gerondelis AIA, IDSA is the Head of the Design Department in Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. She brings a broad range of experience in academic leadership, educational innovation and design in multiple disciplines.

Ann is an architect, and practiced for 12 years before joining the National University of Singapore, then later the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work in design representation related to inquiry fueled curricular innovations in Industrial Design, Architecture and Building Construction. Funded research projects include the development of a high school Bio-Inspired Design Learning Community, Design Integrated with Middle School STEM Courses, and the design of Bio-Inspired Design learning tools. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Woman of Excellence Faculty Award.

You can find out more about Ann here.

Additional Team Members

Lisa Lewis(Advisor)-Montgomery College Professor

Thank you to Jillian Harvan, SCAD student, for her guidance in Photoshop and final touches on the illustrations in our first book, “Just Be.” Another thank you to Daniel McCartan, Drexel student, for help in the final edits of the text. A big thank you to all of our supporters who make this project possible!

NO SILENCE

Our team at Just Be is looking at our own biases, privileges, and practices in terms of anti-rasicm in our personal lives and in our business lives as startup owners. We are working out a long-term plan for including anti-racist policies within our hiring practices, work culture, and mental health advocacy work.

We saw this article from Ben & Jerry’s and thought it was very well spoken. Thank you to Sharing Excess and Evan Ehlers for sharing this with our startup community at Drexel University. We have copy and pasted it below. The full article can be read also on their site at https://www.benjerry.com/about-us/media-center/dismantle-white-supremacy

From Ben & Jerry’s

“All of us at Ben & Jerry’s are outraged about the murder of another Black person by Minneapolis police officers last week and the continued violent response by police against protestors. We have to speak out. We have to stand together with the victims of murder, marginalization, and repression because of their skin color, and with those who seek justice through protests across our country. We have to say his name: George Floyd.

George Floyd was a son, a brother, a father, and a friend. The police officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck and the police officers who stood by and watched didn’t just murder George Floyd, they stole him. They stole him from his family and his friends, his church and his community, and from his own future.

The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy. What happened to George Floyd was not the result of a bad apple; it was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and culture that has treated Black bodies as the enemy from the beginning. What happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis is the fruit borne of toxic seeds planted on the shores of our country in Jamestown in 1619, when the first enslaved men and women arrived on this continent. Floyd is the latest in a long list of names that stretches back to that time and that shore. Some of those names we know — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, Martin Luther King, Jr. — most we don’t.

The officers who murdered George Floyd, who stole him from those who loved him, must be brought to justice. At the same time, we must embark on the more complicated work of delivering justice for all the victims of state sponsored violence and racism.

Four years ago, we publicly stated our support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Today, we want to be even more clear about the urgent need to take concrete steps to dismantle white supremacy in all its forms. To do that, we are calling for four things:

First, we call upon President Trump, elected officials, and political parties to commit our nation to a formal process of healing and reconciliation. Instead of calling for the use of aggressive tactics on protestors, the President must take the first step by disavowing white supremacists and nationalist groups that overtly support him, and by not using his Twitter feed to promote and normalize their ideas and agendas. The world is watching America’s response.

Second, we call upon the Congress to pass H.R. 40, legislation that would create a commission to study the effects of slavery and discrimination from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies. We cannot move forward together as a nation until we begin to grapple with the sins of our past. Slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation were systems of legalized and monetized white supremacy for which generations of Black and Brown people paid an immeasurable price. That cost must be acknowledged and the privilege that accrued to some at the expense of others must be reckoned with and redressed.

Third, we support Floyd’s family’s call to create a national task force that would draft bipartisan legislation aimed at ending racial violence and increasing police accountability. We can’t continue to fund a criminal justice system that perpetuates mass incarceration while at the same time threatens the lives of a whole segment of the population.

And finally, we call on the Department of Justice to reinvigorate its Civil Rights Division as a staunch defender of the rights of Black and Brown people. The DOJ must also reinstate policies rolled back under the Trump Administration, such as consent decrees to curb police abuses.

Unless and until white America is willing to collectively acknowledge its privilege, take responsibility for its past and the impact it has on the present, and commit to creating a future steeped in justice, the list of names that George Floyd has been added to will never end. We have to use this moment to accelerate our nation's long journey towards justice and a more perfect union.”