139 - Advocacy Con Interview

Shaun Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors. I'm your host, Shaun

John And I'm your co-host, John. This week we are excited to bring you a special interview with two of the founders of Advocacy Con, Eric Carter Landin and Whitney Saint Andre, who we've mentioned to you all numerous times on our podcast.

Shaun This will be our second year heading to Advocacy Con, and we are really looking forward to engaging with families again. And of course, spending time with our two guests who are two of our favorite people. So, Eric, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself for our listeners?

Eric Carter Landine Sure. I'm Eric Carter Landin, I'm the CEO and co-founder of Advocacy Con. Advocacy con was an idea of mine that I just felt like there was more that could be done to help support families of the missing and murdered Whitney.

John You want to say hello?

Whitney St Andre Yeah. Hi, guys. I'm Whitney Saint Andre. I am also a co-founder of Advocacy Con and the CEO. If we're doing all of our technical titles. Eric approached me and we have one other co-host that couldn't be with us today, but approached me and Melissa and asked us if we wanted to be a part of this. And we absolutely did. We jumped right in and said, sign us up.

John So, Eric, can you tell us what led you to start Advocacy Con and what is the mission behind the con?

Eric Carter Landine Yeah, absolutely. First, I want to say that it is advocacy conference, not advocacy convention, because people do get that confused. We are not cosplaying as serial killers at this conference. And really the whole thing came from, I guess, Jacob from my baby brother who was killed almost forty years ago. My mom and I have been fighting for justice for that long and throughout the entire four decades. We realized this is one of the loneliest things that you can go through. Even though I have my mom by my side, we still felt very lonely, very alone. We had to figure out everything ourselves without the internet even. So I just felt like there was always more that could be done to support families. And there are a lot of conferences out there that are catered towards the celebrities of true crime. Content creators, the listeners, the consumers, um, with, you know, families invited and families are at those conferences, but there really was not a space that existed just for or specifically for the families and the people that maybe want to go beyond being a true crime consumer, maybe want to see how they can participate in helping advocate for some of these people. So that was the general premise of it. It's really all done in honor of Jacob. It's really done as a love letter, honestly, to my brother. And the whole goal of it is to foster community, foster hope, and to hopefully help families learn a little bit about things that they may not know already when they're put into this journey.

Shaun Thank you so much for sharing that. Wendy, do you want to share more about how you got involved in the advocacy conference?

Whitney St Andre Sure. In the conference itself, it was really just one phone call from Eric and he said, I have this idea, thoughts. And I said, how do we do it? And from there, it just kind of snowballed. I mean, it sounds very simple, but really that's what it was. It was one question and a yes. And here we are. It stepped into the advocacy world six years ago. Now, after Melissa and I helped a First family based off of our podcast, and we helped find a missing person, the remains of a missing person, and being able to support families just by giving a little bit of time, you know, sharing a little bit of volunteer work. That's it. That's all it took was to help a family who had been searching for nine years. It really solidified my role as an advocate. So when Eric approached us with this idea, it was it was a no brainer. We absolutely wanted to do it. If we could help multiple families in one one go, then absolutely. And building a community of people is something that's very near and dear to my heart. People, you need a village. You know, everyone always says, especially when you have kids. You know, as a mom, the first thing they say is, oh, it takes a village to raise this kid. It takes a village to do it. Well, it takes a village to get through grief. It takes a village to do anything every day of your life. I feel like I need a village to make my coffee in the morning most days. So going through something so painful and exhausting and never ending. You need a community. You need a village. You need something bigger than just yourself. And I don't want people to ever feel alone.

John So you said the conference is focused on families. Of course. So what can families expect when they get there? What kinds of programming should they expect? What kind of support should they expect?

Eric Carter Landine So we have a lot of different programming. We've got conversations on how to use social media to get attention on your case. We've got conversations on how to take care of yourself so that you don't completely deplete yourself emotionally, physically, as people can do when they're fighting for justice. Our keynote speaker is Nicole Schmidt, Gabby Petito's mom. So she's going to be talking through some of the advocacy efforts that she's done a little bit about the story and hopefully bringing some hope to the families there. There's also going to be therapy dogs there to help support emotionally. There will be yoga, there will be meditation, there will be licensed mental health professionals on site as well. So we try to think about the whole person as they're attending the conference. It's not just about the case. It's also about the emotional support, the. And all the other little things that make a difference.

Whitney St Andre Yeah, I'll add in. We also have law enforcement professionals there. Detectives retired and currently active detectives or law enforcement professionals so that if you have a question about your case of why did this happen in in my scenario that they can answer those for you, they can teach you about all the verbiage and vocabulary that you may not know when it comes to learning about investigations as well as resources. It's not just health care professionals. We have we have nonprofits there that help missing persons that do investigative genetic genealogy. Perhaps you haven't thought of that as an avenue for looking for your missing loved one or helping solve case. We have DNA companies that are going to be in attendance. So anything that can help move a case, even a millimeter forward or answer a question you may have, that's the goal, is for us to provide that in the same room for conversations to happen.

Shaun So this is the second advocacy conference. Will you talk a little bit about last year, something that surprised you or something where you thought, this is exactly why we created this conference?

Whitney St Andre Yeah. So this may only be our second conference, but we've been planning this now for four years. We took two years to plan the first one and we did it intentionally. We knew we had to think about every aspect of what could go wrong. What resources do we have to have there? What could potentially harm a family or even unintentionally harm a family? Being in presence of all these terrible, horrible things? What could be retraumatizing? And we walked through every single step of it down to what does the ticket look like to are we in a proper location? We needed it to be affordable. How do we make it to where anyone can come? So we started a nonprofit. We make it to where cost isn't a barrier for these families to get there. They're already spending thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars of their own money on advocacy efforts of all kinds. So buying a ticket to a conference is not something that's high on the priority list. When a lot of people are even struggling to pay their bills because they have all these additional costs that come with having an unsolved case or a missing loved one. So we had to think of every aspect of it. Last year in Indianapolis, I want to say it exceeded all of our expectations. I know that we'd set the bar high because we had so long to plan it. We kept adding on. We kept saying, this is it. This is where it's going to be. We thought every possible scenario through, but really sitting in there that first night watching people eat dinner together, the first night we have a welcome dinner so that when you're spending the entire weekend together, you have recognizable faces. You've already kind of broken the ice with all these other individuals that are in the room with you. So sitting there watching these connections form people sitting at a table, sharing a meal together and just talking about how much they've been through and being able to connect on a level that I personally can't understand because I don't have the lived experience. But you can see the connections being made just standing back and watching. And I think that was most surprising for me. And I know that Melissa feels the same way.

John Was there anything that happened last year that led you to make any changes this year?

Whitney St Andre Well, we won't be hosting it at a hotel. We had some struggles with our with our location. That was a big one.

Eric Carter Landine No, but we did make some changes. This year we've added an art installation as part of like the quiet space, the meditation room. Uh, people are going to be able to make art. I'm not going to give away too much to put on a wall with their loved one's name. And that'll also be in conjunction to the wall of flyers that we're going to have the wall of hope. So we've made some adjustments there, and I think we've made some adjustments to the programming to make sure that there's time for the exhibitors to be able to network more with the families. And we've also made it really clear to the exhibitors that they should be enjoying meals at the same time as the families. That way they can take advantage of that time to network as well. So we've made some adjustments. But like Wendy said, there were no huge problems. The hotel, I think, could have been better, and we're hoping this year will be a lot better with the convention center, and we've got some different plans for next year as well.

Shaun Is there anything else you want to share that you're particularly proud of or really looking forward to at this conference? Big highlights.

Eric Carter Landine Yeah, I mean, I'm super proud of what Whitney was talking about earlier, watching the people connect over meals because there was magic that was happening there that we suspected might happen, but it was really cool to see it happen right in front of us. So hearing a family member say, oh my gosh, I tried this on my case and it was amazing. Or I talked to this private investigator and they really helped me. You should call them. All this stuff that my mom and I never had. And I don't think any families have ever had them. And if you think about it, you find yourself in this situation from something that happens suddenly. And no matter where you are in your life, no matter what your skills are, you have to suddenly become a PR specialist. You have to suddenly become somebody who knows how to interface with law enforcement. You have to be able to become somebody who knows how to pitch content creators and news stations and all of these things that you know, you may not be trained for. So I think that's the beauty of advocacy con is it takes away a lot of that mystery, and it kind of speeds up the process of that discovery. So the family doesn't have to learn through trial and error. They can learn through best practices from people who are out there actually doing it.

Whitney St Andre We've done this for forty seven years. I get really anxious leading up to it, and I'm not an anxious person. I get made fun of a lot because I say I don't have anxiety. I see it as stress, but it's anxiety. I'm always worried that I'm going to make a mistake and cause harm to these families, but ultimately they've been hurt over and over again. And the fact that we are even considering that there's a possibility they could be means we likely won't. So it's kind of like preparing for the unrepairable, but we've already done it. You've already done the work because you have prepared for it. So I'm just excited to have new faces come into the room and have old faces, you know? We're going to have we've asked the families that came last year to please consider mentoring a new family that shows up, that this is their first time. Reach out, comfort them. It's not a scary place. It seems scary to walk into a room full of strangers, but I promise it is not scary that first twenty minutes goes by and everyone knows everyone all the time. It's just magical. Like Eric said, to see the connections be made.

John Obviously you both have a podcasting background since this is heavily connected to families and it's very victim forward. What do you wish that podcasters, journalists and other people that cover true crime understood about working with these families.

Eric Carter Landine And how much time do you have? I have a lot to say about this.

John We have like three hours.

Eric Carter Landine Okay, perfect.

John Put it in there.

Eric Carter Landine So we'll spend two and a half hours on this and then we'll move on. See, I think that I think that there's a lot that needs to be considered from the perspective of a creator. I think the first thing is understanding your intentions in telling these stories. I think if you can make your intentions very clear, that helps hopefully guide people in a good direction. So if your intention is to amplify the voices of the families or the victims, or if your intention is to be of assistance, be of service, then I think a lot of your decisions will be made in good faith and with that intention behind it. And so it's a lot harder to cause more trauma. I think it's not impossible, but it's definitely if you're mindful of why you're doing it, it helps to drive. I think different outcomes for the creators that are in it, for the clicks, for the YouTube money, for the advertiser revenue. I don't have a problem with people getting paid for their work. I do have a problem with people using other people's stories to turn them into salacious clickbait, so that they can earn as much money as possible on it. I feel like that is inherently wrong, and the families really feel that, you know, they feel that in the delivery and they listen to those stories about their loved ones, no matter how hard it is, because they want to make sure you know what information is being put out there. So I think being clear about intention is a big deal. I think sticking to the facts is super important. A lot of creators that I've heard have regurgitated what's on Wikipedia or wrong information that's been set on another podcast using other podcasts as their research sources. Primary sources are always preferred. Verifiable primary sources are even better. But stick to the facts. You know, these stories are horrific enough. They don't need to be overly dramatized. Just tell the story as it is. And if you don't have a call to action when you're telling these stories, it might be a good idea to consider doing that. Because a lot of families do have calls to action. They want the tip line shared. They want their petition signed. They need social media posts, share. All of those things can go a long way. And if you are generating income off of this, consider giving back to the families that are making your income possible.

Shaun Speaking about giving back, do you want to share a little bit about the Impact Advocacy Foundation and what it's accomplished and what it can accomplish. Yeah.

Whitney St Andre Yeah. So I mentioned it earlier about how we didn't want costs to be a barrier for families. They're already putting out lots of money for DNA testing, for flyers, for social media ads, for taking time off of work, for to meet with detectives. I mean, there's so much money that's being lost, so much income being lost because they are advocating for their loved one. We didn't want them to have to choose. Of do I pay to get five hundred more flyers printed, or can I go to this conference, potentially gain some resources, make some connections and learn something we didn't want them to have to choose. So we started a nonprofit which is called Impact Advocacy Foundation. And it is essentially just to be able to take that barrier away. We provide scholarships to families that want to attend Advocacy con to cover their general admission, their lodging. In some cases, it goes case by case, and it all depends on how much funds we have. So as they come in is the order we get to give them out. The more money we raise, the more scholarships we can give out. And yeah, it's really just another way we can take that away from them so they don't have to worry about how do I get there? What do I do? How do I pay for this? One thing that was really important to us for this conference is that we didn't want people to have to leave. And we talk about those community moments where they're sitting at a table. There's something powerful about sharing a meal with someone. It's intimate and walls get broken down over these meals. So we wanted to make sure that we had meals on site as part of the cost for general admissions. We're not making money off of this conference. We are one hundred percent self-funded. We have a few gracious sponsors, and we have amazing people like you and John that are constantly putting up with our trivia nights and all the fun things that we are trying to do to raise funds. But we wanted to make sure that we fed them there. You don't have to leave. We are not putting any more stress on your pocketbook. And that's kind of where the the nonprofit was born from.

Shaun We'll be adding your link to our Linktree for the rest of this month leading up to the conference. So if anyone listening can go ahead, they can make a donation to Impact Advocacy and help deliver this important conference to more families.

Whitney St Andre Thank you so much. We do have five people currently on our wait list.

Shaun Let's make it happen.

John How do you go about creating an event like this that's centered around these topics that are obviously so painful to these families without making the entire weekend just overwhelming? I know you have the therapy dog, but what other things did you consider?

Whitney St Andre Trauma can come in multiple ways, so we wanted to make sure we had options. So yes, we have the dogs. We have five dog teams this year. Super excited to have them there. Hope a CR is one of the best resources we've ever come in contact with, but outside of that, we have other options. Eric talked a little bit about the art that we're adding this year. Because art can be used as a form of therapy. We have trauma informed yoga in the mornings. We have a quiet space. If a family needs to step aside and just have a moment to meditate, we have a quiet room and we also have guided trauma informed meditation as well. We have other creature comfort items. Also, last year we had lavender bags and calming stickers. We try to stress balls. We try to think of all the things that someone may seek comfort in and have it available.

Eric Carter Landine We just try to think about. From my perspective, I've experienced that where I'm listening to a podcast and it's overwhelming and I have to step away from it for a minute. So let's create those spaces where people have the capacity, the ability to step away. But also Saturday night, we've got a trivia night. It's a fundraiser for Angels Voices, Silence No More and Impact Advocacy Foundation. And that's just going to be fun. We're going to shake off all of Saturday. Have a good time, enjoy some food together and try to just unwind. And then Sunday is only a half day. So that gives everybody a chance to recover before Monday comes along.

Shaun I'm really looking forward to it. The time when we can just be around each other and enjoy each other's company. One of my favorite memories from last year was actually John and I ordered a couple pizzas, and we just took them to a lounge in the hotel, and we just sat around and ate pizza with a couple of family members and another advocate. And it's just those informal moments, like you were saying, sharing a moment with someone and creating that sense of community. I know that that's something that was always very important to both of you from the time you conceived the idea of the conference. So that's definitely one of my favorite memories from last year.

John Yeah, that was really fun. We planned to do that again.

Shaun So how do you balance giving families a platform while making sure that they don't feel that they're put on display?

Eric Carter Landine I think that first of all, the target audience that we're going after is those families, right? So we're trying to make sure that the sessions match things that they want to know, need to know, should know. And so a lot of those sessions, some are driven by family members, some are not. Some are driven by experts, some are driven by nonprofit organizations. So we let them have a table if they'd like, but we encourage them to spend time in the rooms learning about what's going on, taking some of those sessions and and using them to apply to their cases. We don't ever discourage them from having a table. We just don't want them to feel like they have to be tied to a table all the time. So they want to share their story with anybody. They're welcome to. We'll have a podcasting space if they want to record an episode of their story to share with other content creators. But we never want them to feel like they're obligated to do any of that. They're never obligated to share anything. All of the people who have signed up to speak have signed up. So, you know, we try to make it as low pressure as we can.

John And what about for those families that are listening who have never been anything like this and they don't know where to start and they're nervous about coming, what would you want them to know?

Whitney St Andre I think I would want them to be prepared as far as be ready to immerse yourself in, in the community. And don't be scared because if anyone can understand your stresses, your concerns, your fears, they're going to be in that room. And there has not been a single person in the last year. And even hearing about advocacy con that has not been open and welcoming about what we're doing here. So come in with an open heart, open mind and be prepared to be received because you will be.

Eric Carter Landine Well, I just I think that's the thing is that like, it can be intimidating, but this isn't a conference where there's six thousand people, there's going to be a couple hundred people, and the majority of them know what the families are going through. The majority of them have been there. And so that instantly warms up the room for people immediately. And we heard so many times from families that were nervous about coming, that they didn't know how much they needed advocacy con until they came.

Shaun Is there anything you feel comfortable sharing that a family has told you about the advocacy con experience and what it meant for them?

Whitney St Andre I know that one particular family, she has told us that advocacy con saved her life, that she was at her wit's end. She didn't know what to do. Moving forward for her son's case and she almost did not come. I mean, to the day she was leaving, said she was not going to come. And coming has reignited the spark which was ignite. The spark was our theme for the first year. So the fact that she used those words to us was pretty powerful for us. But it ignited, you know, hope in that she could get justice for her son. And that one, I think was the most powerful for me. There's so many. But when she told us that, I cried every time just thinking about it, to be honest.

Eric Carter Landine We've heard from lots of families that said, you know, this is the most impactful group that they've interfaced with in their advocacy journey. We've had family members tell us that it's completely changed. I mean, I just got a letter today from a family member from the aunt of Armani. I thank God for you, Whitney and Melissa and Hayley Gray. I don't know where I would be today without the kindness and compassion from each and every one of you, involving your continued efforts and support provided to me and my family via Advocacy Con. I'm eternally grateful.

Shaun Wow. That's amazing.

John So with all the time you spend on advocacy, on concentrating on the families and taking care of everybody else, taking care of the people who are there, what is it like for you guys?

Whitney St Andre Hectic. Busy, rewarding in the best possible way. It's exhausting, but worth every second. We spend a lot of time planning it and to see it all come together in one weekend is something else. It's more than magical to see it actually come to fruition.

Eric Carter Landine I think I stayed in bed for two weeks when I got back last year. Um, it was a lot, but it was amazing. Like Whitney said, and and to see our vision come to life in real life was just more than we could have expected, more than we imagined. We're excited to continue to grow. You know, we're excited to continue helping families. And if you even if you're not a family of missing or murdered, if you just care about these cases, we'd love to have you join our community as well.

Shaun What is the dream for advocacy con? So five years from now, what's the dream?

Whitney St Andre You got to back up because Eric's got really, really big dreams and we got to take it one step at a time. And they're great. They're amazing. We're going to get there. But Eric is the idea person and me and Melissa are like, we will do it. We'll figure out how to do it. We have a lot of very close future plans and some further off. Eric, you can share as much as you want to share, but if you could go in five, ten years down the road, we're going to be it's going to be like Universal Studios or something. Size ideas.

Shaun Well, as I said, what is the dream for advocacy con five years from now.

Eric Carter Landine So eventually, I'm not going to say in five years, but eventually I do envision advocacy con in Mexico, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in other places around the world. I envision a summer camp, a summer camp for families of the missing and murdered to be able to just do a retreat, you know, where there's like healing stuff going on and we're not talking about the cases. We're just relaxing, healing, unwinding, and taking care of each other. And so as we look to grow, I think in the next three to four years, we'll start to add on different tracks to our programming. Next year, we'll be looking to add in wrongful convictions. Eventually, we'll be branching into victims of sexual assault, sexual abuse, victims of domestic violence. And there may be different conferences, but we're going to try to expand out as much as we can.

Shaun That would be incredible.

John And how can people get involved? How can our listeners get involved if they want to support families, support the con? What is still needed?

Eric Carter Landine We always need money. So, uh, you know, like when he said, we've got five families on our list and that list continues to grow every day. Every day we get a new application from another family. We're doing a lot to reach out to the media, doing some social media pushes, social media ads. And so all of that costs money. It costs money to feed everybody. It costs money to rent, you know, the convention center, to pay for rooms, for speakers, all the things that we have to pay for. So every dollar, every fifty cents goes a long way to making sure that we don't turn any families away. And we won't, you know, if we have to pay out of our own pockets, if I have to withdraw from my retirement, whatever we have to do to, to make sure we help these families, like we'll do it, but every dollar helps. So that's one thing. And then the other part is sharing. Share the post that we have putting out. We're putting out there, tag families that you know in the comments so that they can see that we exist. We don't want to be a secret. We want people to know that we're here to support them.

Whitney St Andre And there's additional ways that people can support, even if it's not your own funds, let's say, because I know that my budget is tight because I know what my budget is. Everyone's budget is tight these days, and if you can't afford to even give a dollar to us, that's okay. But maybe contact your employer. Do you have a benefits program that allows you to match donations to us by doing community service hours or something along those lines? Or perhaps your your employer would be willing to sponsor or, you know, someone who would like to sponsor the conference. There's an email, an introduction email can go a long way. So even just making connections, even if you can't donate monetarily, that it can help us.

John As far as tickets go, where can the people go and purchase tickets if they want to just attend?

Eric Carter Landine If you go to Advocacy Con dot com, you can click the button that says Purchase tickets. If you're a family member that is fighting for justice or looking for answers for a missing loved one. You click on the family Members button. Apply. That way, we can add your loved one to our website and make sure that if you need a scholarship, we can add you to the waiting list. Tickets are going to be available until like right before the conference, because we have to give food number to people. So like the sooner you buy your tickets, the better. Uh, you can also sponsor a family too. That's an option. And then there's also virtual tickets available for eighty nine point nine nine. That includes both stages, as well as recordings to all of the sessions that you can watch back later. If you have two sessions going on that you want to see at the same time.

Whitney St Andre Yeah, this is something we knew we wanted to add on this year. So I guess going back to the previous question of what changes did you make? We wanted to make sure that we had virtual as an option this year because travel is hard. Families are already taking off PTO to meet with law enforcement to to meet with their PiS. They're already taking PTO for other things We didn't want them to have to do that for the conference, which is also why we hosted on a weekend. But this way, you don't have to worry about travel. You don't have to incur incur additional costs for traveling, and you can watch it at your own leisure if you don't want to watch it the day of because it's a bad day for you or your. Your schedule doesn't allow. You will get the recordings later. Post conference and you can watch them as you would like.

Eric Carter Landine And the in-person ticket also includes access to that content as well. So if you are like, man, I really want to be in person, but I want access to the recordings, don't worry, you'll have access to the recordings as well.

Shaun Whitney, any final thoughts?

Whitney St Andre You may not realize how closely tied you are to someone who is going through this journey, who may have a missing loved one, or may be connected to a family member that has lost lost someone due to homicide, but it's a higher number than you realize. So the more families we can get in front of, the more people we can help. And that's our ultimate goal.

Shaun Thank you, Whitney and Eric, for joining us. And thank you all for listening. Reminder that you can learn more about Advocacy Conference at advocacy dot com, and be sure to visit the link in our Linktree to the Impact Advocacy Foundation, where you can donate to help provide scholarships to families of the missing and murdered. Until next week. We remind you what happens here happens everywhere.

John Thanks for listening. Visit sins podcast. Subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads et sins and survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at survivors dot com.

Shaun If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website and survivors dot com. Sins and survivors. A Las Vegas True Crime podcast is researched, written, and produced by your host, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, survivors dot com.

John The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.