Ms. Bonnick works as a parent consultant on a national level and as a surrogate parent/educational advocate for Connecticut’s State Department of Education, advocating for students who are in the foster care system. She has also been a national lived experience integration subject matter expert and a race equity social justice consultant for the past 10 years. She serves on the Birth Parent National Network, the Birth and Foster Parent Partnership, the core team for a national investigation research project and the Doris Duke Foundation Prevention Initiative.

Further, Ms. Bonnick has served as a consultant in tailored services delivery work in New Mexico, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and the U.S. Virgin Islands to support the implementation of family and youth engagement infrastructures. This includes developing parent stakeholder advisory groups and race equity and justice work. She is also a part of the New England Regional Learning Collaborative, where she leads work on improving constituent engagement and racial justice work when transforming the front door of child welfare. She helped create the Parent Leaders of New England, the first regional parent leadership team in the country.

Ms. Bonnick holds a bachelor’s degree in social work from Southern Connecticut State University and a master’s in social work from New York University, where she was the 2017 Silver School of Social Work, Social Justice Award recipient.

BACK TO TOP

Mr. Simmons has built strong connections with the Oregon Department of Human Services and various other community partners. Some of those partners include foster parents, fathers, parent mentoring programs, substance use recovery programs, attorneys, court personnel and judges, and medical and education organizations. He has been instrumental in linking families to essential resources and helping them learn to advocate for themselves and their families through community programs and training. Through his mentoring and volunteer work, Mr. Simmons inspires many parents and youth to give back to their communities.

In 2015, Mr. Simmons joined the Oregon Parent Advisory Council and trained supervisors statewide on parent and child welfare engagement. He also participated in legislative efforts for the Family First Prevention Services Act, contributed to curriculum development, and facilitated parent support and training programs. Since 2020, Mr. Simmons has actively contributed to Ending the Need for Group Placements, a national collective effort of Casey Family Programs, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and partners. He is also part of the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance’s Birth Parent National Network and the Birth and Foster Parent Partnership. Through his efforts in these networks, he is helping to transform the child welfare landscape, fostering a supportive environment for children and their families.

BACK TO TOP

For more than two decades, Ms. Phagan-Hansel led the Fostering Families Today publication, dedicated to serving foster and kinship caregivers in America. Under her leadership, the subscriber base has grown to a record 30,000 and reaches caregivers in nearly every state. For hundreds of installments of FFT, she was the architect of building each issue, structuring each one around a coherent and critical theme or issue for caregivers. The publication serves foster and kinship caregivers as an invaluable resource of articles, advice columns, how-to-guides and resource reviews.

In 2014 Ms. Phagan-Hansel was honored with an Angels in Adoption award from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. The same year, FFT received an Adoption Excellence Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Phagan-Hansel earned a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism from Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska. In addition to her new role, she stays busy chauffeuring kids to after school activities and working with teens as a Girl Scout and Boy Scout leader. She and her husband, Dan, have three children and live in Douglas, Wyoming.

BACK TO TOP

Ms. Stump grew up in the foster care system with little stability in her childhood. She went to many different schools, but, despite the frequent upheaval in her education, she ultimately graduated from high school a semester early and went on to earn her associate’s degree from Great Falls College. Now studying criminal justice at Montana State University-Northern, she is raising her two younger brothers, whom she adopted when she turned 20.

Ms. Stump has already begun to apply her life experience toward helping others. She has served on panels for lived experience experts and foster parents, as well as various other opportunities that involve inspiring youth and bringing change to the foster care system. She was also a part of JROTC in high school, which involved serving the community through various volunteering opportunities. Ms. Stump is a family partner with Habitat for Humanity in Great Falls and has spoken at Habitat for Humanity events. She and her family even built their own house and have helped build homes for others.

BACK TO TOP

Vélez González draws on their personal experience, entering foster care at 16 and aging out in 2020 after spending five years in six placements. While still attending school, they began to pioneer foster youth advocacy in Puerto Rico. Their early work was aimed at improving situations for youth in care, paving the way for new partnerships within their Independent Living Service program by connecting social workers to better housing providers and housing opportunities for youth. They also partnered with their ombudsman office to inform peers and members of the workforce of available services and supports, including the Older Youth Pandemic Relief.

​In 2023, Vélez González joined the National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Policy Council and was selected by Foster America for its inaugural National Leadership Circle. In 2021, they joined FosterClub’s Older Youth Pandemic Relief Lived Experience Leadership team, and in 2019 received FosterClub’s Outstanding Young Leader Award.

BACK TO TOP

Prior to joining ACS, Ms. Jackson worked for seven years at the Center for Family Representation. Before this, she was trained at the Child Welfare Organizing Project and later became the founding coordinator of its New York City Parent Advocate Network and an executive member of ACS’s Parent Advisory Work Group. In New York state, she served as a member of the New York State Court Improvement Project, which is a judge-led committee that addresses disproportionality and disparity in the child welfare and family court systems.

In May 2024, she presented with ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser at the Casey Family Programs National Partnership and Policy Dinner, where she shared her passion for parent advocacy with congressional leaders and representatives from across the country.

Ms. Jackson also served internationally. She presented at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Beirut, Lebanon, in collaboration with the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Open Society. She was active as a board member of the International Parent Advocate Network, where she worked to increase the influence of parents by supporting organizations and activities that prioritize parent advocacy and the influence of parents in child welfare.

Ms. Jackson died in June 2024.

BACK TO TOP