Child Welfare + Adoption Advocacy
The aim of Emily’s work is to recover the sanctity of childhood. Driven by a deep passion to pursue timely and ethical solutions to permanency for children living outside of parental care, Emily leverages her 15+ years experience in child welfare work to advocate for attachment-centered, trauma-informed, and multi-systematic reform to improve outcomes and quality of life for vulnerable children and families.
Organizational rhythms
Our lives are often preoccupied with the tyranny of the urgent. Left unchecked, this can threaten the health of our organizations. Worn out from the daily to-dos, it’s often challenging for leaders to pull away for focused, strategic planning. By revisiting guiding principles, memorializing foundational documents, and establishing a robust strategic plan to drive your organization’s annual budget, operations are enhanced and relationships strengthened among leadership, staff and constituents.
Board governance
The importance of a fully functioning and healthy Board of Directors for any organization can not be overstated, particularly in looking at the long-term trajectory of an organization’s existence and efficacy. It is Emily’s belief that the health and excellence of an organization includes a well-functioning board executing their oversight duties to include, but not limited to, the keeping of corporate records, central location of founding documents, memorializing meeting minutes, and clearly documenting actions taken by the Board of Directors. Pulling from her experience, Emily advises individuals regarding board governance protocol, understanding Articles of Incorporation + By-Laws, setting board meeting agendas, and how to effectively document activity by the Board of Directors.
Church Engagement
With a specific focus on practical ecclesiology + disability theology in her MTh coursework, culminating in a dissertation entitled A Theological Inquiry on the Practice of the Adoption of Children with Complex Disability, Emily is passionate about engaging churches and para-church organizations with resources that best support children and families impacted by adoption and foster care. With a deep investment in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI®), an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of children having experienced early attachment injuries, Emily is passionate to see churches all do something - something excellently - to care well for vulnerable children and families in their communities.