Dr. Sharon McDaniel-Lowe brings more than 20 years of child welfare experience to Casey. She is the founder, president, and CEO of A Second Chance, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based non-profit agency that provides safe, secure, and nurturing environments for children who are being raised by their relatives or close family friends in kinship care.
Dr. McDaniel-Lowe has both professional and firsthand experience. She was in foster care as a youth and is currently a kin caregiver.
Throughout her career she has worked to improve opportunities for youth in foster care. Before founding A Second Chance, Inc., in Pittsburgh, Dr. McDaniel-Lowe had been a child protective services caseworker, a permanency services administrator, and a director of adoption services.
In addition to her work in direct services for youth in foster care, Dr. McDaniel-Lowe serves as co-chair on the Statewide Kinship Care Task Force in Pennsylvania and is co-facilitator for the Allegheny County Foster Care and Kinship Care initiative. She is also a part-time professor in The Graduate School of Leadership Development at Geneva College in Pittsburgh. She is a former board member of the Black Administrators in Child Welfare and was a panel member for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Advisory Kinship Care Panel.
Dr. McDaniel-Lowe has authored several articles and papers on child welfare and has received numerous local and national honors and awards. She received an Ed.D. from Nova Southeastern University, an M.P.A. in Public Management Policy from University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. in Administration of Justice from Pennsylvania State University. She also completed the University of Pittsburgh’s Leadership Academy modules on non-profit organizations and received a non-profit management certificate from the H. John Heinz School of Public Policy and Management’s Non-profit Management Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.