INNOVATE!
Welcome to INNOVATE! Podcast host Angela Tucker sits down with Re-Envisioning Foster Care Champions - visionary leaders using their lived experience expertise to improve life outcomes for our nation's children and youth in foster care. They are creating a Culture of Possibility, changing the foster care narrative & leading the nation forward. To learn more about INNOVATE!, the Re-Envisioning Foster Care Movement & the Treehouse Foundation, go to treehousefoundation.net.
INNOVATE!
S04E02: Merchandise on a Conveyer Belt
ReEnvisioning Foster Care Champion, Dakota Roundtree Swain, teaches Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and is the Diversity & Inclusion Manager at Harvard Medical School.
Dakota has a Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University and uses their understanding of policy to create pathways that help foster care alumni identify their dreams and develop the skills they need to achieve them.
Dakota has a strong desire to help young people who feel a responsibility to change the child welfare system learn about the policies that shaped their experiences in foster care. They do this so youth can understand "the why" behind decisions made on their behalf by legislators and child welfare professionals and move toward healing.
Having been a highly engaged youth advocate during their time in foster care, Dakota is working diligently to transform child welfare so that youth who are currently experiencing the system do not feel like “merchandise on a conveyor belt” - only valued for their stories.
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ABOUT THE HOST:
INNOVATE! host, Angela Tucker, is a REFCA Champion and a nationally recognized mentor, entrepreneur, educator and consultant. Angela is a transracial adoptee who, having been adopted from foster care by a white family, grew up in a city that was demographically just 1% Black.
She is the Founder of The Adopted Life, a child-welfare consulting business where she strives to center adoptee stories and bring clarity and truth to narratives about race, class and identity.
Angela is the author of You Should Be Grateful: Stories Of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption. She has hosted the previous two seasons of INNOVATE!, and currently works as the Executive Director of the Adoptee Mentoring Society.
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Angela Tucker - Host & Producer
Nicholas Ramsey - Editor & Producer
Judy Cockerton - Executive Producer
Beylen Curtis - Research Assistant
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The Treehouse Foundation has been leading the Re-Envisioning Foster Care in America (REFCA) movement since 2010. Please visit www.treehousefoundation.net for more information about the award-winning work of the Treehouse Team.