Noah Whitaker is a passionate advocate for postvention. His motivation stems from personal experience. He never met his paternal grandfather who died by suicide at age 52 before Noah’s birth. While Noah was a senior in high school, his father who was struggling with substance use and inadequately treated mental illness, died by suicide, also age 52. Noah has been married to his high school sweetheart for more than twenty years, and they have five children. One of his avowed missions in life is to disrupt the generational transmission of suicide. He believes this can be accomplished through the transmission of hope and building supportive systems in communities. He is a vigilant advocate for saving lives and supporting the bereaved.

Noah has worked in the mental health field for more than twenty years with efforts centered around serving those with severe and persistent mental illness, the unhoused, the substance-addicted, and numerous other populations. He has helped write plans for California’s Proposition 63: the Mental Health Services Act. He created and developed programs such as the Older Adult Hopelessness Screening Program, Depression Reduction Achieving Wellness (DRAW) Program, Reducing and Eliminating Stigma Through Art Targeted Education (RESTATE), and LOSS Teams. He planned and directed large events including the Festival of Hope, National LOSS Team Conference, and dozens of others. He also ran a government communications team and has vast familiarity with marketing, design, technology, content creation, social media, and storytelling. He has a particular love of branding.

For the last decade, Noah has consulted with communities in strategic planning and implementation of suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention efforts. He has had the pleasure of working with communities including Fresno, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Nevada, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, Sutter-Yuba, and Tulare counties, among others. This work was centered around strategic planning and assisting communities in developing postvention support.

To this day, Noah actively serves on the Tulare County LOSS Team and has responded to the scene of dozens of suicides over the last decade to support the newly bereaved through postvention response efforts. He is a firm believer that everyone has a role in creating hope.