About this Event
Marian Sokol is Executive Director of the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas, whose mission is to foster healing for grieving children, their families and the community. She joined the staff in 2013 and programs for children have expanded tremendously since that time. The Center now serves more than 2200 children and their caregivers annually in a beautiful homelike setting, offering counseling, support groups, camps and therapy focusing on expressive arts. In 2016 the Center was awarded grant funding to create Children’s Bereavement Center of the Rio Grande Valley, located in Harlingen. In 2017 the Center partnered to create Wonders & Worries at the Start Cancer Clinic in the medical center area of San Antonio. This program is dedicated to supporting children whose parents have a life- threatening illness. In 2018 Marian lead efforts to establish a rural Texas expansion after the Sutherland Springs tragedy which took 26 lives, creating a counseling and support Center, Paloma Place, in a partnership arrangement with the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Department of Counseling.
Marian’s career has always focused on infants and children facing adverse situations. She has served for decades as an Executive Consultant on Maternal and Child Health issues, with a lead role in planning the 2012 International Conference on Stillbirth, SIDS and Infant Survival. From 2003 to 2011 Dr. Sokol served as President of First Candle/SIDS Alliance, a national not-for- profit organization promoting safe pregnancies and the survival of infants through the first years of life. For the previous two decades, Marian Sokol was Founding Executive Director of Any Baby Can, Inc. of Texas, a model support center for children who are chronically ill or disabled.
The organization was nationally recognized by President George H. W. Bush as a Presidential Point of Light. Dr. Sokol is a Phi Beta Kappa, with a doctorate from the University of Texas and a postgraduate Masters in Public Health from UT Health Science Center at Houston. She has received numerous state and national awards including that of being a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International and designation by the Texas Governor as a Yellow Rose of Texas. Marian and husband Tom have a passion for travel and have lived in Japan for three years and traveled to 35 countries. She adores her children and grandchildren… birth and adopted… and the myriad of pets they bring with them.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Botika, 303 Pearl Parkway, San Antonio, United States
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