Welcome to the Thanksgiving week edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.

If this is your first listen, you can also check out Episode 0 here to learn more about our vision and focus, and subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

From the team here at the Wonk, we wish all of you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving.

Episode # 5: Former ACYF Commissioner Rebecca Jones Gaston

This week’s conversation digs into how people shape policy systems, how those systems shape the people within them, and why it matters for effective leadership.

Rebecca Jones Gaston was most recently the Commissioner for the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families for the Biden Administration.

Over nearly three decades in human services and child welfare, she’s worked at every level; from front-line casework to senior executive leadership.

She also brings her own personal experience as someone adopted out of foster care.

What I loved about this conversation was that it went beyond programs and policy mechanics.

It’s a real exploration of what it means to stay present and whole in work that often pushes people toward distance or detachment.

It pushed my thinking on policy, systems, and leadership, and I hope it does the same for yours.

Sponsorship Shoutout

Special thanks to Binti for their foundational sponsorship of WonkCast.

Welcome, Wonks, to another edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy, where we spotlight the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy.

If this is your first listen, you can also check out Episode 0 here to learn more about our vision and focus, and subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

I hope you enjoy listening, and look forward to hearing from you about who else you’d like to hear from on WonkCast.

Episode # 4: Former ACF Assistant Secretary Lynn Johnson

This week we’re bringing you a conversation I had with Lynn Johnson.

You likely know her from when she served as Assistant Secretary at the Administration for Children and Families during the first Trump Administration.

We talk about her prioritization of promoting economic mobility for families, and her emphasis on ensuring poverty not be conflated with neglect.

She also shares about her journey from being a critic of the Head Start program to being one of its most outspoken conservative champions.

We also discussed her read on the work of ACF so far in the second trump administration, and what she sees ahead.

Since the time of our recording, the U.S. Senate has confirmed Alex Adams to lead ACF, so her perspective is particularly timely.

Sponsorship Shoutout

Special thanks to Binti for their foundational sponsorship of WonkCast.

Welcome, Wonks, to another edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy, where we spotlight the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy.

If this is your first listen, you can also check out Episode 0 here to learn more about our vision and focus, and subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

I hope you enjoy listening, and look forward to hearing from you about who else you’d like to hear from on WonkCast.

Episode # 3: Dr. Melissa Merrick

This week we have a conversation with Dr. Melissa Merrick, a public health leader reshaping the conversation about adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.

Before becoming President and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America, Dr. Merrick was a senior CDC epidemiologist and practiced as a clinical child psychologist.

Her work is a consistent through line of looking to the latest research and public health strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect.

We talked about what the original ACEs study showed about lifelong health and development.

She also shared about how her background as a clinician for families, epidemiologist, and scientific leader shaped the way she thinks about child and family policy today.

Our conversation also touched on the inherent challenges of defining a term as broad as prevention, and how she understands its relationship to child safety.

The topic of ACEs is also a powerful one for me personally; the research on how ACEs shape health and development was my gateway into working on child welfare policy.

I hope this conversation sparks new ideas for you, and thanks as always for listening.

Sponsorship Shoutout

Special thanks to Binti for their foundational sponsorship of WonkCast.

Rita Soronen is the President & CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

Under her leadership, they’ve tested, proved, and taken to scale Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, an  evidence-based approach to child-focused recruitment for adoption from foster care.

We talk about how the motivations that bring you into this work can eventually become a hindrance you need to shed, the role and limits of evidence in driving policy change, and the creative practice she uses to continually push beyond her comfort zone as a leader. 

Learn more about Wendy's Wonderful Kids.

This episode is brought to you by Binti.

Our first episode is an interview with Mary Bissell, Cofounder and Partner at ChildFocus. She’s a lawyer, policy and advocacy strategist, and entrepreneur who is a leader in child and family policy advocacy.

Mary has made an enormous mark on child and family policy, and her influence has been in rooms where policy decisions happen dating back decades. 

We talk about the art of effective coalition leadership, something she learned as a protege of the late great MaryLee Allen, who mentored so many of us in this field.

We also talk about kinship care, an area of policy that indelibly shaped Mary’s career, and which she in turn has shaped significantly.

For more background on Mary, see her bio on the ChildFocus website

This episode is brought to you by Binti

Introducing WonkCast: People Power Policy, where we spotlight the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy. 

In each episode, host Zach Laris talks with leading policy experts and decision makers about the future they're creating.

We lift up conversations with the people who power child and family policy, and we also dig into:

People. Leaders' background/"why"/significant mentors who shaped them;

Power. Their perceptions of the levers of decision-making that shape what's possible.

Policy. Their vision for what's possible and what's next in child and family policy.

We're excited to bring these conversations to you, and can't wait to hear who you want to hear from next.

WonkCast is a production of Child Welfare Wonk.

The launch of this podcast is sponsored by Binti.