Powering the Profession: Emerging Trends & Topics

NEW WEBINAR SERIES! Powering the Profession: Emerging Trends and Topics

Our Powering the Profession: Emerging Trends and Topics webinar series will explore emerging trends and topics of interest to Family and Consumer Sciences students and professionals across multiple content areas. The virtual sessions are led by a panel of industry experts and are designed to provide you with valuable, compelling information to become a more informed consumer and professional.  Sessions will be recorded and made available for on-demand viewing. PDUs will be available. 


Consumer Participation on Standards Committees

Our session focuses on emerging trends impacting consumer product safety and the importance of consumer participation on standards committees.  In this session, the panelists will provide an overview and discuss the issues and challenges associated with consumer product safety.  
  • Tuesday, May 21
  • 12:00 - 1:00 PM ET


Presented By

Cleo Manuel Stamatos 

Consumer & Legislative Outreach Manager, American National Standards Institute

Cleo Manuel Stamatos is a consumer and legislative outreach manager at the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Her role includes expanding and amplifying ANSI’s consumer involvement, while also supporting ANSI’s government relations outreach. She has more than 20 years of experience working in consumer outreach, public affairs, and legislative activities. Prior to joining ANSI in 2021, Stamatos devoted her professional career to consumer affairs. She launched her career in Washington, DC, working for  Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Later, she joined the National Consumers League, where she worked for almost 10 years managing public affairs, education, and outreach with NCL’s president (then Linda Golodner). While at NCL, she appeared as an expert on Oprah twice and worked on a range of issues from consumer fraud to child labor. Other career highlights include her roles serving as executive director for the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, communications director for the Maryland Governor’s Office for Children, Youth, and Families, and working as a consultant with a range of clients, including AARP Maryland, Catholic Charities, and TracFone Wireless. As a consultant, her primary focus was strategic alliances, specifically outreach to the consumer and disability communities. She has served on the board of directors of the National Consumers League, National Grange Advocacy, Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, and as an advisor to the National Association of American Veterans. In 2022, Consumer Action honored Stamatos with special recognition for her “tireless effort as champions of consumer rights.”

Jonathan Midgett, PhD

Consumer Ombudsman, Consumer Product Safety Commission

Jonathan Midgett, Ph.D. is the Consumer Ombudsman at the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in Bethesda, Maryland. Since joining CPSC in 2001, Dr. Midgett has been evaluating emerging hazards, describing consumer behaviors, and contributing to the creation of voluntary and mandatory standards for consumer products. As an engineering psychologist in the Division of Human Factors and as the former leader of the Children’s Hazards Team in the Office of Hazard Identification and Reduction, he regularly contributed analyses of child cognitive, physical, and social development, anthropometry, and parent-child interactions for federal investigations and rulemaking activities associated with the prevention of childhood injuries including suffocation, strangulation, drowning, head injuries, choking, and toxic exposures. A graduate of the Family Relations and Human Development program at the University of Guelph, his research has appeared in the Psychonomic Bulletin and ReviewContemporary Educational PsychologyThe Encyclopedia of Marriage and the FamilyInjury Prevention, and the Journal of Children’s Health