Laura Porter CO-FOUNDER

Laura Porter is Co-Founder of ACE Interface, LLC. With Dr. Robert Anda, Ms. Porter develops and disseminates educational products and empowerment strategies that help leaders throughout the nation to dramatically improve population health. She is honored to be a thought partner, educator, consultant and coach in over two dozen states.  Ms. Porter provides support and services to a wide range of groups… from parents leading informal initiatives to state and federal officials leading agencies and elected and appointed leaders of Tribal Nations.

Laura Porter brings to ACE Interface more than two decades of experience leading successful implementation of ACE Study concepts.  Her expertise includes overseeing analysis and dissemination of surveillance and archival data to support decision making and designing and facilitating processes demonstrated to improve population health, safety and productivity.  She has a unique perspective because of the depth, breadth and longevity, of her work with communities, and because of the stunning success of those communities. 

Her teaching and coaching include how to effectively use NEAR Science to improve lives (Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACE and Resilient communities), and how to use living systems theory, including complexity and network theory, to build positive feedback into community efforts so that success in one endeavor fuels success in the next. However, Laura isn’t all about theory – she has a deep love and respect for the people she works with across the country.  In the documentary, Resilience, Laura explains: “If you put this science into the hands of the people, they will do very wise things with it."

Laura is a technical advisor for the national substance abuse prevention system, in partnership with the Southwest Prevention Center at the University of Oklahoma.  The Southwest Prevention Center provides technical assistance, with a focus on trauma informed policy and practice, that strengthens prevention systems and the nations behavioral health workforce.  Until 2018, this assistance work was done by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Center for the Application of Prevention, and substance abuse prevention systems to embed NEAR science findings into policy, practice and community norms.

Video clip related to her work with CAPT.

From 1998 to 2013, Laura Porter directed the Washington State Family Policy Council and Office of ACE Partnerships.  In these roles, she worked with elected Senators and Representatives from the four caucuses of the Washington Legislature, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and Governor, and four members of the Governor’s Cabinet.  Laura’s partners in this work included managers from seven state agencies, directors and members of 53 community-based collaborative organizations and leaders from ten Tribes.  Laura and her colleagues developed a unique model for improving the capacity of communities to deliver stunning results for a small investment (the Self-Healing Communities Model).

Communities using the model have documented reductions in the rates of seven major social problems and Adverse Childhood Experience scores among young adults.  Projected cost savings due to caseloads avoided in child welfare, juvenile justice and health costs associated with lower births to teen mothers, were estimated to be over $55m in the 2009-2011 biennium during which time the cost of the program was $8m; long term savings from avoided caseloads and improved high school graduation were conservatively estimated at over $296m.

You can read more about the Self-Healing Communities Model, in an article published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at: https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/06/self-healing-communities.html.

You can watch a one-hour introductory webinar about the Self-Healing Communities Model at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edP2C92Z4Ak

Prior to her work with the State of Washington, Laura Porter served as an elected County Commissioner. Commissioner Porter designed a service-oriented approach to water quality assurance that secured family wage jobs in the shellfish industry.  She also led an inter-jurisdictional criminal justice initiative that implemented prevention, facilities and system improvements.   Working cooperatively with over a dozen unions and guilds, Commissioner Porter ended a multi-year pattern of grievances and strikes, thus assuring uninterrupted county services to businesses and residents. In 1991, Commissioner Porter authored a public transportation plan which won voter approval and created the Mason County Transportation Authority.  During her tenure as a founding member of the Board of Directors, Mason Transit became the first transit system in the state with all routes and services fully ADA accessible.  Commissioner Porter served on the Washington Counties Risk Pool Board of Directors (liability), the Washington Counties Insurance Fund Board of Directors (health), and the Washington State Association of Counties Legislative Steering Committee.

Laura is mother to three children and grandmother to four precious grandchildren.  She loves to garden, travel, learn, and play.