Laura Mecoy

Advocacy Team Chair for the LA Community Board and mom to 2 young adults with T1D

Laura Mecoy is the Advocacy Team Chair for the LA Community Board.  She is an award-winning former journalist who is the managing partner and founder of Mecoy Communications, an LA-based strategic communications firm. Laura is the mother of two young adults diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and her family has been active in Breakthrough T1D since 2000, raising and donating nearly $300,000. Laura served as a walk team captain for 15 years, mentor for the newly diagnosed, founder of the South Bay parent group, member of the board, chair of the LA and the Long Beach Walk Committees and the Board’s Public Relations/Publicity Committee. As the chair and as a member of the Advocacy Committee, she has participated in advocacy meetings with members of Congress and traveled to D.C. to lobby Congress on behalf of Breakthrough T1D.

With her daughter, Grace Walker, she participated in the 2015 Breakthrough T1D Children’s Congress. Her son, Ryan Walker, also was a South Bay Walk Ambassador when Breakthrough T1D still had a South Bay Walk. He was featured in a movie trailer Breakthrough T1D created with Sugar Ray Leonard and has served as a Breakthrough T1D spokesperson. She and her husband, Cary Walker, are members of the Breakthrough T1D LA Ride team and have participated in five Breakthrough T1D Rides to Cure Diabetes. They will be joining the Breakthrough T1D Ride in Death Valley this fall, along with their son, Ryan. They live in Manhattan Beach.

Dr. Kristin Castorino, D.O.

Dr. Kristin Castorino, D.O. is the Vice President of Clinical Research and Senior Investigator at Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, with over 16 years of experience in diabetes research. Her work focuses on diabetes in pregnancy, artificial pancreas technology, and health equity in diabetes care for Latina women.

A native of California’s Central Valley, Dr. Castorino earned her B.A. in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, followed by her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine. She completed her Internship in Family Medicine at the University of Nevada, Reno, and her Internal Medicine Residency at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital her mentorship began with the late Dr. Lois Jovanovic, a pioneer in diabetes and pregnancy research.

Dr. Castorino has played a key role in advancing Artificial Pancreas (AP) technology, serving as an investigator in the CONCEPTt study on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes and as Principal Investigator for the LOIS-P study on insulin requirements and CGM use in pregnancy. She has worked closely with AP research leaders—including Drs. Frank Doyle, Eyal Dassau, and Howard Zisser—to refine AP algorithms for pregnancy and conduct multi-week outpatient studies in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes.

In addition to diabetes technology, Dr. Castorino is deeply involved in health equity initiatives. As Principal Investigator of the Semillas de Cambio Program, she collaborates with public health partners to improve diabetes education for Spanish-speaking Latina women, particularly those facing socioeconomic disparities. She also provides clinical care for women with type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes before, during, and after pregnancy at the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department’s Diabetes in Pregnancy Clinic.

Dr. Castorino has contributed to national clinical practice guidelines, co-authoring sections on healthy eating and exercise in diabetes and pregnancy for leading endocrinology and diabetes organizations. She is an active member of the American Diabetes Association, the American Osteopathic Association, and has held leadership roles, including Chair of the California Diabetes and Pregnancy Program Sweet Success for Technology Committee. In 2020, she earned Board Certification in Advanced Diabetes Management from the Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists.

Her research has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals, influencing standards of care for diabetes management in pregnancy and the development of diabetes technology.

Edward Bellfield, MD

Dr. Ed Bellfield is a pediatric endocrinologist with Kaiser Permanente at the Panorama City and Los Angeles Medical Centers.
Growing up in Oxnard, he took a long roundabout to get back to Southern California. He completed his pediatrics residency training at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center and endocrinology fellowship training at the University of Illinios at Chicago.
His clinical interests includes diabetes technology and its use to enable positive health behaviors. He coordinated efforts to create Panorama City's multidisciplinary pediatric diabetes clinic, monthly parent support group, and annual teen transition to adulthood symposium. He teaches residents at the KP Los Angeles program, speaks at school nursing events, and leads the Kaiser Permanente Beta Buddies for the upcoming Breakthrough T1D OneWalk event.

Robert Nagy, MD

Dr. Nagy is a practicing physician in Santa Barbara. He obtained his medical degree from USC after graduating with a degree in biology from UC Los Angeles. Since 2001, Dr. Nagy has had a private practice in general and geriatric psychiatry in Santa Barbara.

In addition, he is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at USC, a clinical instructor at the Department of Education’s Hosford Clinic at UC Santa Barbara, and is a member of the American Medical Association, Southern California Psychiatric Society and the American Psychiatric Association.

Dr. Nagy joined the William Sansum Diabetes Center Board of Trustees in 2008 and has served as a member-at-large on the Executive Committee, chaired the Bylaws Committee and also served on the Objectivity and Integrity in Science Committee. He was Board President from 2013-2015, and is currently the immediate past President.

Dr. Nagy has had Type I diabetes for 49 years.  He attended Camp Conrad-Chinnock four times as a camper and two times as a doctor when his son (who also has type I diabetes) was a camper.

He is an avid cyclist with several trips to Europe with rides through the Pyrenees and the Dolomites.  In California he has completed century and double century rides.

Lorraine Stiehl

International Board Member, Breakthrough T1D

Lorraine Stiehl has been actively involved with Breakthrough T1D for nearly 30 years.  She has served as an executive director for two chapters, a national field manager for the Western United States and helped to create 17 new Breakthrough T1D chapters. Currently, Lorraine serves on the Breakthrough T1D International Board of Directors. Lorraine plays an active role in numerous organizations including Diabetes Hands Foundation/Tu Diabetes, the diaTribe Foundation, the Diabetes Empowerment Foundation, Students With Diabetes, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. Supporting research efforts and prevention for T1D is personally important to Lorraine as her husband Chris lives with T1D. Lorraine is convinced that Chris has survived 55 years of T1D because of Breakthrough T1D and the vital role the organization plays in both directing and funding T1D research.

Amy McKinnon

Amy is a long-distance runner and nutritionist with type 1 diabetes.
She was diagnosed at the age of 12 and took up running at the age of 25.
She has completed 10 marathons and multiple ultra marathons.
Her goal is to work with other people living with diabetes to improve their diabetes management through healthy eating and regular exercise.

Kara Hornbuckle

Director of Development, Sansum Diabetes Research Institute

Kara has lived with type 1 diabetes (T1D) for over 31 years. However, her interest in supporting others impacted by T1D began in 2012 after her son Lucas was also diagnosed with T1D. After Lucas’s diagnosis Kara ended her eight-year career in education as a school counselor. Lucas’s diagnosis inspired Kara to continue her skills in counseling as she launched a support group in 2013 for the T1D community in Santa Barbara. In 2015, Kara became an Outreach Consultant for Breakthrough T1D. In 2016, Kara became Breakthrough T1D’s Central Coast Development Manager where she had the opportunity to manage the One Walk program and also develop inaugural fundraising events throughout the central coast. Kara joined the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute team in July of 2017 as a Donor Engagement and Stewardship Manager.

Kara earned her bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and her master’s degree in Guidance and Counseling from Cal Lutheran University. Kara and her husband Jeff, have been married for 11 years. They have two children, Lucas and Kamryn.

Dominic Velasco

Dominic Velasco is a senior undergraduate student of Music Studies at UCSB. He has two jobs, one on campus at the CLAS tutoring center, and one off campus at Sansum Diabetes Research Institute where he was just hired. For the past year and half, Dominic has been learning the ins and outs of his Type 1 diagnosis as he tries to find a balance between responsibilities, health, and fun. Outside of work and school, he enjoys playing guitar, drumming, going out for rides on his motorcycle, and helping care for the communities cats and pups as part of a small animal caretaking business.