Youth Advocacy & Policy Lab (Y-Lab)

Harvard Law School

Below are the biographies for CAP’s “Art of Social Change: Child Welfare, Education, and Juvenile Justice” Fall 2010 speakers. Click on the relevant speaker’s name to link to his/her biography.

Elizabeth Barthlolet

elizabethbartholetrf13Elizabeth Bartholet is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School, where she teaches civil rights and family law, specializing in child welfare, adoption and reproductive technology. Before joining the Harvard Faculty, she was engaged in civil rights and public interest work, first with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and later as founder and director of the Legal Action Center, a non-profit organization in New York City focused on criminal justice and substance abuse issues.

Jessica Budnitz

facultyjessicabudnitzJessica Budnitz (Lecturer on Law) is CAP’s founding Managing Director. Before working at CAP, she founded and directed Juvenile Justice Partners, a child-focused legal clinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is an Echoing Green Foundation Fellow, the 2003 recipient of HLS’s Gary Bellow Public Service Award, and a 2004 recipient of the YWCA of Cambridge Award for Outstanding Women. Ms. Budnitz is currently a Prelaw Residential Tutor in Leverett House at Harvard College. She is a 2001 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1998 graduate of Duke University.

Penny Codfelter

clodfelter10Penny Clodfelter, LCSW, LMSW Since August 1999 Ms. Clodfelter has been the Program Manager of the Jackson County Family and Juvenile Drug Court, Kansas City, Missouri. She has been employed by the  Family Court since 1993 and formerly coordinated the Linkage Project for the Court. From 1988 – 1993, she was employed by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services as a Child Welfare Specialist. Ms. Clodfelter also works part-time as a clinical social worker in the Emergency Department of Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City.  She also serves as faculty for the National Drug Court Institute, and as a consultant for the  Department of Justice as well as Health and Human Services. Ms. Clodfelter has a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Illinois and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Legal Studies from Illinois State University, Normal, IL. She is a licensed clinical social worker in both Missouri and Kansas. Ms. Clodfelter is a founding director of Amethyst Place, a transitional living program for recovering, homeless women and their children.  She has served on their Board since 2000 and has held the office of Chair, Treasurer, and currently Secretary. Ms. Clodfelter was  elected to the Board of the Missouri Association of Drug Court  Professionals in 2008 and is currently the Secretary. She also was appointed to the Missouri Supreme Court Alternative Treatment Courts Committee in 2008. She has been a presenter and trainer at national, state and local conferences on the topics of substance abuse, domestic violence, child welfare issues and policies, suicide prevention, and drug court implementation.

Ivana Culic

culic10Ivana Culic, MD.is the Associate Director of the Special Care Nursery at Beverly Hospital as well as a staff neonatologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Born and raised in Croatia, Dr. Culic attended the University of Zagreb Medical School where she completed her post-graduate studies.  As valedictorian of her medical school class, she was offered a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at Boston University.  She then spent two years working to better understand the molecular base of adult onset illnesses. Following the time she dedicated to the basic science, Dr. Culic turned her interest towards clinical medicine. She completed her Pediatric Residency and Fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Tufts University, (Floating Hospital  for Children) in Boston. Following graduation from Tufts, Dr. Culic  began her career as a neonatologist, working at both Children’s Hospital Boston and Beverly Hospital. She is board certified in pediatrics and in neonatal perinatal medicine. In addition to her clinical practice, she is an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Culic is married, has three children and currently resides on the North Shore.

David Deakin

deakin10David Deakin is the Chief of the Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston. He supervises teams of lawyers, victim witness advocates, forensic interviewers and investigators, who investigate and prosecute cases of physical and sexual abuse of children, child homicide, domestic violence, and adult sexual assault. Before becoming Chief of the Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau in 2004, David served as Chief of the Child Abuse Unit since 1998, and before that, he worked as an assistant district attorney in the Child Abuse Unit. From 1992 to 1996, David worked as a prosecutor in the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1991, David served for a year as a law clerk to Justice Ruth I. Abrams of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (now retired). David holds undergraduate degrees from Williams College and Oxford University.

 

Erik S. Pitchal

pitchal10Erik S. Pitchal is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Suffolk  University Law School and founder of the Child Advocacy Clinic.  Prior to joining the Suffolk faculty, Professor Pitchal was the director of Fordham University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Family & Child Advocacy, where he also taught Children and the Law and Family Law. He received his J.D. from Yale and his B.A. in public policy from Brown. Professor Pitchal’s expertise as a practicing lawyer is in the representation of children, primarily in care and protection, delinquency, and CHINS cases. Before entering academia, he was an attorney at the Legal Aid Society and  Children’s Rights, both in New York. He is co-counsel in Kenny A. v. Perdue, a federal class action lawsuit in Atlanta in which he represents 3000 foster children. In 2005, Professor Pitchal was named Child Advocate of the Year by the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division. He is a former law clerk to Judge Robert Patterson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Professor Pitchal’s research interests are in family law, children and the law, and legal ethics. He is particularly  interested in the relationships among lawyers for children, their  clients, and the state. Some recent publications include Where Are All the Children? Increasing Youth Participation in Dependency Proceedings, 12 J. U.C. DAVIS J. JUV. L. & POL. 233 (2008); Children’s Constitutional Right to Counsel in Dependency Cases, 15  TEMPLE POL. & CIV. RTS. L. REV. 663 (2007); and Buzz in the Brain and Humility in the Heart: Doing It All, Without Doing Too Much, on Behalf of Children, 6 NEV. L.J. 1350 (2006). He also recently completed an evaluation of Nebraska’s guardian ad litem system for a project funded by the Nebraska Legislature.

Andrew Hoffman

Andrew Hoffman is the Managing Attorney for the Boston office of the Children and Family Law Division (CAFL) at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, where he represents children and parents in child abuse and neglect cases.  He previously served as staff counsel to CAFL and also practiced in civil legal services.  He is the author of The Role of Child’s Counsel in State Intervention Proceedings: Toward a Rebuttable Presumption in Favor of Family  Reunification, 3 Conn. Pub. Int. L.J. 269 (Spring 2004) and several chapters in Child Welfare Practice in Massachusetts, MCLE (2006).  He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Sally Padden

Sally Padden is First Justice of the Essex County Juvenile Court in Massachusetts.

Dr. John B. King

king10

Dr. John B. King, Jr. serves as Senior Deputy Commissioner for P-12 Education at the New York State Education Department. Dr. King is responsible for ensuring quality and accountability for New York State’s education system, which serves 3.1 million students in Pre-kindergarten through Grade12 in over 7,000 public and non-public schools.  He brings to this role extensive experience leading urban public schools that are closing the achievement gap and preparing students to enter, succeed in, and graduate from college.

Dr. King works closely with the New York State Board of Regents and Commissioner of Education to advance the state’s education reform agenda by collaborating with teachers, students, school leaders, parents, superintendents, college and university administrators, union leaders, government representatives, community leaders, and other partners. The reform agenda includes (1) making New York State’s educational standards and assessments more rigorous and better aligned to college and career readiness; (2) developing a comprehensive P-20 data system and instructional reporting system that provides accurate, actionable, and interconnected data to support improved decision-making at all levels of education; (3) improving the preparation, evaluation, professional development, and support of teachers and school leaders; and, (4) working with districts and partner organizations to turn around the state’s lowest performing schools.

Prior to his appointment as Senior Deputy Commissioner, Dr. King served as a Managing Director with Uncommon Schools, a non-profit charter management organization that operates some of the highest performing urban public schools in New York and New Jersey. Prior to joining Uncommon Schools, Dr. King was a Co-Founder and Co-Director for Curriculum & Instruction of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School.  Under his leadership, Roxbury Prep’s students attained the highest state exam scores of any urban middle school in Massachusetts, closed the racial achievement gap, and outperformed students from not only the Boston district schools but also the city’s affluent suburbs.  Prior to founding Roxbury Prep, Dr. King taught high school history in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. King earned a B.A. in Government from Harvard University, an M.A. in the Teaching of Social Studies from Teachers College, Columbia University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an Ed.D. in Educational Administrative Practice from Teachers College, Columbia University.  In addition, Dr. King has served on the board of New Leaders for New Schools and is a 2008 Aspen Institute-New Schools Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Fellow.

John Connolly

connolly10City Councillor At-Large John Connolly is one of the youngest members of the Boston City Council and is currently serving his second term. He serves as chair of the Council’s Committee on Environment and Health, Committee on Education, and of the Special Committee on a Livable Boston and he is a member of the Council’s Committee on Ways and Means. Councillor Connolly also served as a member on the City’s Climate Action Leadership Committee, a task force supported by the Boston Foundation and the Barr Foundation.  The task force was charged with setting goals for community-wide reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The recommendations were submitted to the Mayor this past Earth Day. Councillor Connolly is a former middle school teacher and has taught in New York and Boston. Councillor Connolly is also an attorney and has made pro-bono work a cornerstone of his legal practice. John has provided pro-bono services to numerous community-based  organizations including Action for Boston Community Development  (ABCD); The Teachers Loft, a resource center for public school  teachers; Humanitarian International Mission, a Boston based non-profit aimed at promoting oral health in the Latino community; and the PrideLights Foundation, an organization that is now part of  the AIDS Action Committee. John received his A.B. from Harvard  University and his J.D. from Boston College Law School. John is  also a graduate of The Roxbury Latin School. John owns a home in West Roxbury with his wife Meg, 2 year old daughter Clare, and 1 year old Teddy.

Richard Weissbourd

weissbourd10Richard Weissbourd is currently a lecturer in education at HGSE and at the Kennedy School of Government. His work focuses on vulnerability and resilience in childhood, the achievement gap, moral development, and effective schools and services for children. For several years he worked as a psychologist in community mental health centers as well as on the Annie Casey Foundation’s New Futures Project, an effort to prevent children from dropping out of school. He is a founder of several interventions for at-risk children, including ReadBoston and WriteBoston, city-wide literacy initiatives led by Mayor Menino. With Robert Selman, he founded Project ASPIRE, a social and ethical development intervention in three Boston schools. He is also a founder of a new pilot school, the Lee Academy, that begins with children at 3 years old. He has advised on the city, state and federal levels on family policy and school reform and has written for numerous scholarly and popular publications. He is the author of The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America’s Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley, 1996) and The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development (Houghton Mifflin, 2009).

Chico David Colvard

colvard10Chico David Colvard was born in Augsburg, Germany, the son of a WWII German‐Jewish mother and African-American father raised in the segregated south of Georgia. After pursuing a career in theatre arts, Chico received his J.D. from Boston College Law School and now teaches “race, law & media” related courses at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is a former Filmmaker-in‐Residence at WGBH, a member of the Producer’s Lab at Firelight Media and former Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow. FAMILY AFFAIR is Chico’s feature‐length documentary debut, which premiered in competition at Sundance and has since shown around the world. FAMILY AFFAIR has received Audience and Best Documentary Feature Awards and was the first film acquired by Oprah Winfrey for her new cable channel, OWN. FAMILY AFFAIR was selected by the International Documentary Association to Oscar qualify during the 2010 DocuWeeks Theatrical Showcase in L.A. and NYC.

Bryan Stevenson

stevenson10Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.  Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned.   Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults.  EJI has recently succeeded in winning a ban on life imprisonment without parole sentences imposed on children convicted of most crimes in the U.S. and has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts.  Mr. Stevenson’s work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system has won him numerous awards including the ABA Wisdom Award for Public Service, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize, the Olaf Palme International Prize, the ACLU National Medal Of Liberty, the National Public Interest Lawyer of the Year Award,  the 2010 NAACP Ming Award for Advocacy and the 2009 Gruber Prize for International Justice.  He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, has been awarded 12 honorary doctorate degrees and is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law.

Naoka Carey

naokacarey2Naoka Carey is the coordinator of the Massachusetts Campaign for  the Fair Sentencing of Youth and is the Juvenile Justice Policy Advocate at the Youth Advocacy Department of the Committee for Public Counsel Services. She is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, where she represented youth in the juvenile justice system as part of the Juvenile Rights Clinic.  Prior to attending law school, she received a Master’s Degree in Education from Harvard, focusing on adolescent risk and prevention.  After graduating from law school, she clerked for the Hon. Warren Ferguson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She has worked in private practice as a civil litigator and at a number of organizations serving youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, including the Children’s Law Center of Washington, D.C., Advocates for Children, and the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York. She has also worked as a youth organizer and trainer in Seattle and Boston.

Lael Chester

laelchesterr12Lael Chester is the Executive Director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), a nonprofit organization that advocates for a fair and effective juvenile justice system in Massachusetts . Previously she was an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Division of the Massachusetts Office of Attorney General, and was the Albert Martin Sacks Clinical Fellow at the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School . Ms. Chester graduated from Barnard College and Harvard Law School . Her prior work experience includes both litigating and researching juvenile justice, criminal justice and civil rights issues. She was honored to receive the Jay D. Blitzman Youth Advocacy Award in May 2004 for her extraordinary commitment to protecting the rights of juveniles. She currently serves as a member of the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee and is the Chair of the Disproportionate Minority Contact Subcommittee.

 

Marcia Robinson Lowry

lowry10Marcia Robinson Lowry is the executive director of Children’s Rights, Inc., the leading national, non-profit organization fighting for the rights of children dependent upon state child welfare systems.  Children’s Rights, which Ms. Lowry founded in 1995, protects America’s most vulnerable children using policy, public education, and the power of the courts.  Children’s Rights’ policy department conducts research, public policy analysis and advocacy at the state and federal levels with the goal of improving child welfare systems.

Ms. Lowry has dedicated her legal career to protecting the rights of children.  Formerly director of the Children’s Rights Project of the New York Civil Liberties Union (1973-1979) and the American Civil Liberties Union (1979-1995), Ms. Lowry has a long history of reforming child welfare systems.  She pioneered the first body of law to protect children in foster care, bringing increased attention and public scrutiny to systems that were all but ignored.  Her work at Children’s Rights uses litigation or the threat of litigation in conjunction with national and local policy analysts, experts, and government officials to implement realistic, long-term solutions to change the lives of children.  These efforts have created concrete changes in foster care systems such as more funding and resources, as well as improved management and better outcomes for children.

Children’s Rights currently has eight child welfare systems under federal court orders mandating widespread reform–Connecticut; Georgia; Mississippi; New Jersey; Tennessee; Washington, DC; Wisconsin; and Michigan, and three cases in active litigation, in Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Marylou Sudders

sudders10Marylou Sudders became President and Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children  (MSPCC), in February, 2003. She provides executive leadership to  the private non-profit children’s agency that has been dedicated to  preventing child abuse and neglect services since its inception in 1878. Previously, Ms. Sudders was Commissioner of Mental Health for  the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for seven years. In this capacity, she served as the Commonwealth’s chief spokesperson on  mental health issues. Key legislative successes during her tenure  included the passage of: mental health parity insurance; five fundamental rights for mental health consumers; civil commitment  reform; the children’s mental health commission; and, the hospital  interpreter law. She has a master’s degree in social work and a bachelor’s degree with honors from Boston University. She is an  instructor at Boston College School of Social Work and serves as a mental health expert for the Department of Justice. In 2006, Ms. Sudders chaired Governor Patrick’s Transition Team on Human  Services. Ms. Sudders is a member of the board of directors of the  Massachusetts Association for Mental Health, National Alliance for  the Mentally Ill and Pine Street Inn and is vice-chair of the board  of DentaQuest Foundation. The recipient of many awards, Ms. Sudders lives in Cambridge with her husband Bradley Richardson.

Tamar Birkhead

birkhead10Tamar Birkhead is an assistant professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she teaches the Juvenile  Justice Clinic and the criminal lawyering process. Her research  interests focus on issues related to juvenile justice policy and reform, criminal law and procedure, and indigent criminal defense.  Her scholarship has been published in the Buffalo Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, and Georgetown’s American Criminal Law Review. Her current projects include The Youngest Profession: Consent, Autonomy, and Child  Prostitution, forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review,  and Culture Clash: The Challenge of Lawyering Across Difference in  Juvenile Court, forthcoming in the Rutgers Law Review. She is also co-editing the third edition of a casebook, Children, Parents, and  the Law, with Professor Leslie J. Harris.

Professor Birckhead’s  2008 article on raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction in North Carolina has received significant attention at both the state and national levels. The Raleigh News & Observer published an  op-ed written by Birckhead on the subject of raising the age, and she has been interviewed by radio and print reporters across the  state on her findings. She has testified before the N.C. Governor’s Crime Commission on the history of raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, and Action for Children North Carolina, the state’s premier child advocacy organization, issued a press release and fact sheet on her research. In addition, the Campaign for Youth Justice, a national organization dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under 18 in the  adult criminal justice system, highlighted Birckhead’s research in their newsletter and interviewed her for their weekly radio program, “Juvenile Justice Matters.” Recently she was appointed Co-Facilitator of the Legal Issues Working Group of the Youth Accountability Planning Task Force, established by the North Carolina General Assembly to develop an implementation plan to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction from 16 to 18. Prior  to joining the UNC School of Law faculty in 2004, Birckhead taught at Suffolk University Law School in the Suffolk Defenders Program, a year-long criminal defense clinic. After clerking for the late  and the Hon. Edith Fine in the Massachusetts Appeals Court, she practiced for ten years as a public defender, representing indigent criminal defendants in the Massachusetts trial and appellate courts as a staff attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel Services  and in federal district court in Boston as an assistant federal public defender. Birckhead has defended clients in a wide variety of criminal cases, from violent felony offenses in state court to acts of terrorism in federal court. Among her clients was Richard  Reid, the attempted “Shoe Bomber” prosecuted in the First Circuit under the U.S.A. Patriot Act.

Licensed to practice in North Carolina, New York and Massachusetts, Birckhead has been a frequent  lecturer at continuing legal education programs across the United States as well as a faculty member at the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School. She is vice president of the board for the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence and has been appointed to the executive council of the Juvenile Justice and Children’s Rights  Section of the North Carolina Bar Association. She is also a member  of the advisory board for the North Carolina Juvenile Defender as  well as a member of the Criminal Defense Section and the Juvenile  Defender Section of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers.  Birckhead received her B.A. degree in English literature with honors from Yale University and her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, where she served as Recent Developments Editor of the Harvard Women’s Law Journal.

Lisa Goldblatt Grace

Lisa Goldblatt Grace is the Co-founder and Director of the My Life  My Choice Project. Since 2002, MLMC has offered the only comprehensive prevention curriculum aimed at reaching girls most vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation. Further, MLMC offers a unique continuum of services including prevention groups, training, survivor mentoring, and program consultation. Ms. Goldblatt Grace has been working with vulnerable young people in a  variety of capacities for twenty years. Her professional experience includes running a long term shelter for homeless teen parents, developing a diversion program for violent youth offenders, and working in outpatient mental health, health promotion, and residential treatment settings. Ms. Goldblatt Grace has served as a consultant to the Massachusetts Administrative Office of the Trial  Court’s Redesigning the Court’s Response to Prostitution project and as a primary researcher on the 2007 U.S. Department of Health  and Human Services study of programs serving human trafficking victims. In addition, Ms. Goldblatt Grace has written in a variety of publications regarding commercial sexual exploitation and offered training on the subject nationally. Ms. Goldblatt Grace is  Adjunct Faculty at the Boston University School of Social Work. She is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and holds masters  degrees in both social work and public health.

Ann Wilkinson

Ann Wilkinson has been a Mentor and Group Facilitiator for MLMC since 2006. Ann brings eighteen years of experience as Counselor, Group Facilitator, and Mentor to multi-stressed youth and women. Prior to coming to My Life My Choice, Ann worked in the fields of domestic violence, homelessness, and substance abuse treatment in a variety of leadership roles. Her work experience has included being the Senior Manager at Elizabeth Stone House, and the Director of Women’s Programs at Peace at Home. Ann utilizes her personal experiences in “the Life” to inform the work she does with adolescent girls and adult women, helping them build a life free from exploitation.

Bart Lubow

lubow10Bart Lubow began his career in criminal justice in 1974 as a social worker for the New York City Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division, where he developed alternative sentencing plans for felony defendants facing jail or prison sentences. When he became Director of Special Defender Services for Legal Aid in 1979, he expanded the scope of this work by developing  social work interventions to enhance representation in criminal cases. During his tenure, Special Defender Services grew to be the  nations largest defender-based advocacy program. Its techniques, including the preparation of pretrial release plans, defendants pre-pleading reports and pre-sentence memoranda, and affidavits to support appeals, have since been replicated by various public  defender offices across the country. In 1984, Mr. Lubow was named  Director of Alternatives to Incarceration for New York State by  Governor Mario M. Cuomo. During the eight years that he was  responsible for the development, funding and oversight of  alternatives, 175 new programs were established, intervening in the  cases of more than 50,000 defendants annually. After Gov. Cuomo merged Mr. Lubow’s unit with the states Division of Probation in 1986, Mr. Lubow subsequently assumed responsibility for the regulation, funding and oversight of probation services in 58 local  departments as Deputy Director of Probation and Correctional  Alternatives. In 1992, Mr. Lubow became a Senior Associate at the  Annie E. Casey Foundation, where he has been responsible for designing and managing juvenile justice reform initiatives and other community justice and safety efforts. For the past 18 years,  he has designed and managed the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), the nations most ambitious effort to demonstrate that jurisdictions can reduce reliance on secure  detention without sacrificing public safety. JDAI now operates in more than 110 jurisdictions in over half the states. JDAI sites have dramatically reduced reliance on secure detention without  sacrificing public safety, reduced racial disparities in local  justice systems and saved millions of taxpayer dollars by  facilitating the downsizing of multiple detention centers. Mr. Lubow became the Director of the Program for High-Risk Youth at  Casey in 2002, extending his portfolio to include projects and  initiatives relevant to improving the odds that seriously  disadvantaged youth make successful transitions to adulthood. In 2009, Mr. Lubow was named Director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy  Group, part of the foundations newly established Center for  Effective Family Services and System. In addition to ongoing  management of JDAI, the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group provides consulting services to states and localities seeking to reduce  reliance on incarceration. Mr. Lubow did his undergraduate and graduate work at Cornell University. He serves on a number of local  and national boards and has published multiple articles on justice system reform.

Tim Decker

decker10Tim Decker was appointed as the Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services in January 2007. For the past 26 years he has  served in a variety of leadership positions with the Missouri Department of Social Services and the Greater Kansas City Local Investment Commission (LINC); one of Missouri’s innovative public/private community partnerships focused on citizen  engagement, local governance, natural helping networks, and neighborhood-based services. Tim previously served as a program manager and administrator with the Division of Youth Services from  1984 – 1993. During this time, the agency was engaged in major  system transformation toward more humane, therapeutic, developmental, and effective approaches to juvenile justice. Tim  managed programs throughout Missouri’s continuum of care including  community, moderate and secure care facilities; serving as an Assistant Regional Administrator in the Northwest Region. Tim  worked from 1994-1995 with the Missouri Family & Community Trust statewide system change initiative; and has served as a social worker, therapist, and treatment coordinator with agencies in the private non-profit sector. Tim was certified as a national  trainer for Families and Schools Together from 1999 – 2007, exemplary model prevention program with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Tim earned his degree in Social Work and Psychology in 1982 from Park University in Parkville, Missouri and completed the  Institute for Education Leadership Education Policy Fellowship Program in 2007. Tim serves as a frequent presenter on topics such  as juvenile justice reform, results-based accountability, family and community engagement; and organizational leadership, management, and culture change.

Paul Epstein

epstein10Born 60 seconds before Theo Epstein, Paul Epstein is, technically, the middle of Leslie and Ilene Epstein’s three children.  Raised in Brookline with sister Anya and twin brother Theo, Paul graduated from Brookline High and headed off to Wesleyan a short 25 minutes from Theo and Anya at Yale. While playing soccer and studying classics, he discovered a passion for working with youth when he became a Big Brother. The experience completely changed the direction of his life and he embarked on a career in social work. After working in residential treatment at The Home for Little Wanderers, where he met his lovely wife, Saskia Grinberg, he earned an MSW from BU in 1998. He has worked as a social worker at Brookline High School for 7 years. He took a sabbatical to work on Saskia’s and his vision to open the only youth community center in Brookline.  In 2005, he co-founded the Foundation to be Named Later with Theo.  He and Saskia live in Brookline with their two beautiful children, Annika and Ezra.

Mark Edwards

edwards10Mark Edwards is the executive director of OpportunityNation, a campaign of Be the Change, Inc. OpportunityNation is building a national coalition of non-profit organizations, business leaders, leading thinkers, and grass roots organizations around a bipartisan/nonpartisan agenda to enhance economic opportunity and mobility. Our goal is to build awareness of the issues around opportunity and mobility in this country, and develop an agenda  that has a role for citizens, communities, companies, and government. The OpportunityNation coalition will develop a policy platform and launch a national summit in November 2011 to focus attention on these issues, and use the upcoming presidential  election as a lever to thrust the agenda into the mainstream debate. Prior to joining Be the Change, Mark was the managing  partner of Edwards & Company, Inc., a marketing and communications company focused on elevating educational institutions and not-for-profit organizations.

Sue Heilman

heilman10For over eighteen years, Sue Heilman worked at Horizons for Homeless Children.  This past summer she stepped down as CEO.  Having received her B.A. from Wheaton College, Sue has developed expertise over two decades in program planning, implementation, and evaluation; early childhood education; working with disadvantaged families; and fundraising, finance and administration.

Reporting to an active, diverse board of directors drawn from the Greater Boston community, as CEO of Horizons, Sue was responsible for all programmatic and administrative activities and manages a staff of more than 100.  Sue joined Horizons for Homeless Children in January 1992 after serving as Executive Director of Thompson Island Education Center, where she had worked for almost ten years.  Prior to Thompson Island, she worked for a variety of nonprofit organizations in the Boston area that served low-income and disadvantaged people. She was drawn to the work of Horizons for Homeless Children because of a strong personal desire to give young children, who suffer the greatest consequences of homelessness, opportunities to grow and thrive.

Sue believes that homeless children and families need and deserve support to grow, develop and become self-sufficient. “Change takes time,” she says, “and there is no exact recipe for how to transform a family from the experience of homelessness to one of stability and self-sufficiency. There are many ingredients that help.  I am honored to be a part of an organization that works with homeless children and families to put these ingredients together to help lead them to a better future.”

Eric Dawson

dawson10Eric Dawson is the co-founder and President of Peace First. An  organization he started as an 18 year-old, Peace First works on the  twin challenges of youth violence and disengagement by preparing  young children with the skills to be peacemakers. Working in areas  as diverse as Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Colombia, and  Fairbanks, Alaska, Peace First has an 18 year track record of  reducing violence and promoting the social emotional learning of  young people by building the long-term capacity of schools to teach  basic skills of peacemaking. A native of the Midwest, Eric was lured away by a scholarship to Harvard College where he stayed on to get his M.Ed at the Graduate School of Education and an MDiv from the School of Divinity. Besides the odd jobs of bartending, Stop and Shop commercials, and serving as the driver for the author of Curious George, Eric got his professional start directing a summer camp in Roxbury and doing organizing around disability awareness. A program evaluator at heart, Eric is particularly  interested in the intersections of social change, social services, and movement building. He currently lives in Dorchester, MA with his wife and three children.

Theresa Ellis

As Founder and Co-CEO, Theresa Ellis sets the strategy for Common Impact, working with the Common Impact team to realize the organization’s mission, recruit the right people, and ensure the organization’s financial viability. She works closely with the team to design solutions that create enduring value for both nonprofit clients and corporate partners. She also represents Common Impact in the field, speaking frequently about the need to take a strategic approach to cross-sector partnership in order to bring various constituents to the table. In concert with the Board’s Nominations Committee, she is actively involved in developing Common Impact’s Board of Directors.

Theresa’s vision in creating Common Impact was to find a way to unlock the talent resident in America’s Fortune 500 companies, using this talent to create stronger communities for all. Through its innovative model, Common Impact channels critical, untapped resources into the nonprofit sector, while creating value for its corporate partners. By engaging employees who might otherwise not be involved in their community, Common Impact helps strengthen the social fabric of the communities in which it works. Common Impact has 7:1 social return on investment and partners with some of America’s leading companies such as Bain & Co., Cisco, State Street Corporation, and Fidelity Investments.

Common Impact has been widely recognized for its innovative model, including accolades from the Boston Business Journal, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Catalogue for Philanthropy, MITX (Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange), and the Social Innovation Forum. Theresa speaks frequently on the topics of making corporate social responsibility (CSR) “real” for companies’ employees, creating true reciprocal value through cross-sector partnerships, and social entrepreneurship. Her recent speaking engagements include: the Exchange at Harvard Business School; the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; the First Annual Massachusetts Civic Summit; and the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service.

Prior to founding Common Impact, she worked as the Director of Development and Evaluation at CADCA and as a Research Associate at Policy Studies Associates. She currently serves on the Board of Visitors for the Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College.

Theresa earned an A.B. in Religion with honors at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She also received the Phillip D. McInnis Class of 1936 Award, given to the outstanding woman in the graduating class.

Joel I. Klein

Joel I. Klein is Chancellor of the New York City Department of  Education. As Chancellor, Mr. Klein oversees a system of 1,631 schools with 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees, and a $21 billion operating budget. He launched Children First in 2002, a comprehensive reform strategy that has brought coherence and capacity to the system and resulted in significant increases in  student performance. In the next phase of Children First, Mr. Klein will build on this progress by cultivating teacher talent; expanding school choices so that students attend schools that best meet their individual needs; and innovating to ensure students are  prepared for rigorous, real-world opportunities in the 21st  century. Formerly chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, Inc, a media company, Mr. Klein served as Assistant U.S. Attorney General in  charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice  until September 2000 and was Deputy White House Counsel to President Clinton from 1993-1995. Mr. Klein entered the Clinton administration after 20 years of public and private legal work in  Washington, D.C. He attended New York City’s public schools and  graduated from William Cullen Bryant High School. He received his BA from Columbia University where he graduated magna cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa in 1967, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in  1971, again graduating magna cum laude. He has also received  honorary degrees from Columbia University, Duke University, Amherst College, Manhattanville College, Georgetown Law Center, Fordham Law School, New York Law School, and St. John’s School of Education. He received the Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City from New York University for his work as Chancellor.

Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz held a wide variety of leadership positions in education and government before joining the Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty in 1996. From 1997 to 2002, Schwartz also served as president of Achieve, Inc., an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit organization created by governors and corporate leaders to help states improve their schools. From 1990 to 1996, Schwartz directed the education grantmaking program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nation’s largest private philanthropies. In addition to his work at HGSE, Achieve, and The Pew Charitable Trusts, Schwartz has been a high-school English teacher and principal; an education advisor to the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts; an assistant director of the National Institute of Education; a special assistant to the president of the University of Massachusetts; and executive director of The Boston Compact, a public-private partnership designed to improve access to higher education and employment for urban high-school graduates. Schwartz has written and spoken widely on topics such as standards-based reform, public-private partnerships, and the transition from high school to adulthood.