Heather joined the Center in December 2021 with a strong desire to support change efforts in child welfare law and policy. Heather will serve as a liaison for Court Improvement Programs and bring her experience with change management, root cause analysis, and adult learning theory from an agency perspective in supporting the work of the Center’s Capacity Building Center for Courts. Heather hopes to support court improvement efforts, inform large scale changes, and build capacities of courts and legal partners to positively impact the lives of children and families.
Before joining the Center, Heather spent 13 years at the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) in a variety of roles. She started in 2008 by representing the agency as a local office attorney in Child in Need of Services (CHINS) and termination of parental rights proceedings, and in appellate matters. She also served Hoosier children and families as an administrative law judge and a local office director. She helped create and develop expanded foster care supports for and with older youth through the Collaborative Care program. Collaborative Care partners with and helps youth transition successfully to adulthood. It is fitting that she helped build Collaborative Care. She is known for collaborating with and including all stakeholders particularly those who have traditionally been excluded from conversations. She will keep refining solutions with everyone at the table until consensus is reached. While some see this as a weakness, she sees it as her strength.
In her most recent role at DCS, she was the Deputy Director of Strategic Solutions and Agency Transformation, overseeing the agency’s quality improvement efforts and managing oversight of federal compliance requirements. She led a dedicated team of change agents who planned, implemented, and evaluated programs and services to improve outcomes for children and families. She was responsible for redesigning and implementing the five-year strategic Indiana Child and Family Service Plan and led high-level discussions on responsible and ethical use of data, research, and evaluation.
In her 13 years at DCS, she learned that the child welfare agency is only one piece of the child welfare system, yet it is regularly tasked with “transforming” child welfare. She is passionate about child welfare system improvement but is not a fan of the word transformation to describe what’s needed in child welfare. If you are called to transform something every five to seven years—did you ever really understand the problem? Did you choose the right solutions?
Court partners and the entire legal system play an integral part in improving outcomes for children and families. She is excited to be a part of that improvement at the Center. She looks forward to completing root cause analysis that gets to the heart of problems, developing and testing solutions, measuring outcomes, understanding the impact, and repeating the cycle until sustained positive outcomes are reached.
When not working, she is an avid traveler, sharing new experiences in the world with her husband and children. She has enjoyed every travel experience, even the ones with a flat tire or a night spent sleeping on the floor in an airport. Every travel experience gives the gift of perspective—she believes that we learn more about ourselves when traveling than the place or people we are visiting.