Carey Sipp, Director of Strategic Partnerships for PACEs Connection, helps decision makers at organizations and coalitions realize the benefits of partnership in the PACEs (positive and adverse childhood experiences) movement to prevent and heal childhood trauma and create positive childhood experiences. She is gifted in identifying potential partnerships and connecting organizations, grantees, funders, communities, and corporations that share similar or complementary missions and values, helping them connect the dots between, for example, creating trauma-informed work and school environments and seeing improvements in attendance and outcomes. She is also skilled at building relationships and making available the connections, learning, and data to accelerate and expand the movement and to track and share positive outcomes of the work. 

Carey synergizes four decades of experience as an award-winning writer, marketer, fundraiser, and campaigner. Formerly the SE regional Community Facilitator for PACEs Connection, Carey supported initiatives in 11 states in forming, finding resources, and leveraging opportunities to implement trauma-informed practices. She still serves as the PACEs Connection lead in communications and social media to build awareness of PACEs science across all sectors.

The author of a book on breaking multi-generational cycles of addiction and abuse, Carey was writing about the health implications of what she called “toxic intensity” before learning, in 2000, about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).  A lifelong student of the sciences, Carey is drawn to learn daily about brain development, health and leadership. With all humility, she calls herself a cautionary tale and a success story in what positive and adverse childhood experiences can do to a human. She is an avid believer in post-traumatic growth, big ideas, and the power of good people working to change the world. She also believes that to disrupt toxic systems, we as adults must learn and share about PACEs science, examine and heal our own trauma, and view every child as being our own. 

Carey is the mother of an adventurous son and daughter living in Montana and is restored by spending time with her children and their partners when Montana is warm, and reading a good book in a shady spot at the beach when at home in coastal North Carolina.

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.