Centering parents and parenting in randomized evaluations of cash transfers to families

By Minjee Kim, PPS '25

On February 16, 2024, the Center for Child and Family Policy welcomed two panelists, Libby Doyle, current Duke MPP student and former researcher analyst with the Urban Institute, and Emilia Sotolongo, senior technical assistance analyst at Child Trends. They sat down with a group of undergraduate and graduate students and talked about their experiences working at think tanks. The speakers shared how they began doing policy work, memorable projects, where they see the industry heading, and tips for pursuing a career at a think tank.

During the talk, Doyle explained how she became interested in criminal justice reform after studying the death penalty in college. She knew she did not want to do research for the sake of research, so she began working as a research assistant at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center. Doyle’s work took her all over the country, but she found that locally based projects allowed her to interact more directly with people than federal contracts. As a result of her time at the Urban Institute, Doyle’s interests have shifted more toward local government initiatives. She now works as a research fellow for the City of Durham to support the new HEART mental health crisis response program.

Sotolongo, on the other hand, talked about her “less traditional track” to a think tank. She started her career as a middle school teacher in the Durham Public School system. Although she had originally wanted to be a direct practitioner, she began feeling burnt out. That led Sotolongo to start pursuing a career more rooted in research, and she worked as a senior research aide for the Center for Child and Family Policy before joining Child Trends. Now, Sotolongo focuses primarily on qualitative research at Child Trends, where she manages projects and conducts interviews with various stakeholders. She continues to draw on her experience as an ESL teacher to guide her research involving immigrant and refugee youth.

Doyle and Sotolongo described some similarities between their respective think tanks. As a whole, think tanks focus on actionable research, and both speakers appreciated being able to see the direct and indirect impacts of their work. Think tanks also produce deliverables on a quicker timeline and for a wider audience than academic research. The policy briefs and memos created by think tanks, however, are often not accessible to a lay audience. Doyle noted that think tanks are making an effort to develop more innovative methods to disseminate information—at Urban, for instance, there is a Research to Action Lab that focuses on translating research into workable information.

As a student considering various policy internships for the summer, I appreciated hearing firsthand what it was like to work at a think tank. Although I had known about think tanks for a while, it had been hard for me to conceptualize what exactly the day-to-day looked like. Both speakers helped clarify, through specific examples from the projects they had worked on, just how wide the range of tasks and policy areas could be. I have always wanted to be involved in policy research while also still being on the ground, engaging with the community, so I was also excited to hear that think tanks have been moving toward more inclusive practices, such as participatory research. Doyle and Sotolongo provided valuable insight into the opportunity for growth and exploration for early career professionals at think tanks.

 

Minjee Kim is a junior majoring in Public Policy with a minor in Global Health and a certificate in Child Policy Research. She hopes to pursue a career in law advocating for evidence-based reform.
By Phoebe Ducote, PPS '25

On January 19, 2024, the Center for Child and Family Policy (CCFP) welcomed panelists from three nonprofit policy organizations for its Exploring Careers in Child and Family Policy Speaker Series. Neil Harrington from NC Child, Brennan Lewis from Equality NC, and Elizabeth Paul from the Public School Forum of North Carolina gave students insight into working at nonprofit policy organizations. The panelists shared how they landed their current positions, what they enjoy and find challenging about advocacy work, and tips for pursuing non-profit policy careers.

  • Neil Harrington is the current research director for NC Child, where he works on issues including early care and education, child health and safety, and family economic security.
  • Brennan Lewis works as an education policy associate at Equality NC, supporting and implementing education policy strategy to improve school environments, create stronger advocates for LGBTQ youth, and inform inclusive school board policies and state laws.
  • Elizabeth Paul is the policy and research manager at the Public School Forum of North Carolina, where she leads research, advocacy, and publication work focusing on school finance and student outcomes.

The speakers began by acknowledging that it can be hard to identify opportunities because child and family policy nonprofits are typically small, and one must seek them out. The panelists talked about looking for how their interests intersected with different non-profit policy organizations to identify places they would be interested in working. Each had different pathways into child policy, including starting in political campaigning, working internships while in school to make connections, and networking with friends.

Listening to the panelists talk about their work opened my eyes to opportunities I had not thought much about. As Duke students, we often aim for the highest level of whatever we want to pursue. For most students in policy work, that means aiming to work in DC. However, as the panelists talked, it was clear how much policy work happens at the state and local level. Many students overlook this level of policy work because of our own bias to the “size of the work.” The panelists highlighted how many policies are determined by states, counties, and cities, and how one’s work can have direct, tangible impact at this level.

Policy change happens where there’s opportunity. Part of this work is recognizing that the (political) window is sometimes closed. And during that time, it is just as important to hold on to the work, so you do not fall behind.

Elizabeth Paul

When they talked about their work, one thing that stuck with me was they all talked about how working in advocacy can be a struggle at times because policy change is impacted by so many factors. Elizabeth Paul spoke about this, explaining that “policy change happens where there’s opportunity. Part of this work is recognizing that the (political) window is sometimes closed. And during that time, it is just as important to hold on to the work, so you do not fall behind.”

For me, one of the most impactful parts of the panelists’ discussion was when they talked about their academic paths and the importance of taking time to figure out what you want to do.  When asked about their decisions to pursue an MPP rather than attending law school, two panelists highlighted the importance of taking time after a bachelor's degree to figure out how to “create change for yourself and allow yourself to think about what your next steps will be.” This opened my eyes to a world beyond the common Duke student path of going straight to graduate school and helped me realize the importance of introspection regarding my own educational path.

These perspectives and conversations are exactly why the Center for Child and Family Policy offers these speaker series and opens the opportunity to receive invaluable glimpses into different careers within child and family policy. The panelists’ shared experiences provided a rich overview of the complexities and rewards of pursuing a career in nonprofit and advocacy while underscoring the necessity of perseverance, creativity, and strategic thinking within policy advocacy. This inspired reflection on leveraging personal and academic experiences toward meaningful employment opportunities and provided helpful advice for every student contemplating careers in public policy.

Phoebe Ducote is a junior majoring in Public Policy (B.A.) with a minor in Education and a certificate in Child Policy Research. She is getting her teaching license and is planning on attending law school.

Ann Skinner is a research scientist working with CCFP and C-StARR. She has been with CCFP for just over 22 years, working for much of that time on Parenting Across Cultures. Recently, her research has been aimed at understanding the impact of COVID-19 on families around the world and how families cope when exposed to other community stressors like violence and war.

Learn more about Ann's work in our CCFP Community Spotlight below. 

What were you doing prior to CCFP?

For about nine years before I came to Duke I worked as a special education teacher and supervisor for students with behavioral and learning challenges. I worked in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools for a bit, but most of those years were with a residential wilderness program for youth with court involvement in Rhode Island and North Carolina.  I also helped facilitate re-entry of those students back into their home school districts. 

What have you spent most of your time on recently, in terms of research?  

I am honored to be working on a new project collecting data in Ukraine. Along with a wonderful colleague in Lviv and her team across Ukraine, we are collecting data from adolescents, young adults, and their parents. We have connected with five universities throughout the country to examine both risk and protective factors in their lives, including their individual experiences, their family relationships, and the larger community stressors stemming from their war experiences, which vary across the country. In just two months, over 1,500 young people and many of their parents across Ukraine have joined the study and completed the survey. We have also received hair samples from youth so that a future project can examine biological stress markers, which in turn are linked with many health outcomes. One interesting thing about the survey we are using is that we capture a lot of young people’s experiences not just with anxiety, moral injury, and PTSD, but about the strategies they are using to cope, their feelings of hope and optimism, and whether they feel they are experiencing post-traumatic growth. 

My hope is that this project can inform recovery efforts in Ukraine and other places where traumatic experiences have impacted individual safety, adolescent and young adult development, and relationships. 

What do you consider your greatest recent accomplishment while working at CCFP? Or, what are you most proud of in terms of your work and research at CCFP?  

I love being able to build new international relationships with researchers around the world. Working with people in my field, who view development and adjustment through different cultural lenses is such an important part of what motivates the work I do. I have been fortunate to be part of a few fellowships and small projects that have allowed me to meet researchers in many countries and work with them to collect new data, or analyze existing data through a new framework. 

What do you enjoy most about working at CCFP?  

One of the things I love about CCFP is that I have a lot of people I can talk to with different areas of expertise and experience. It is hard to find a truly collegial community and such diverse talents who are willing to talk through challenges with you. 

What was your first-ever job?  

My first official job was working in our local library during high school. I would go to work after track practice and shelve books until the library closed.  For a long time, my resume read: “Job title:  Shelver.  Job duties: Shelved books." I’m glad to be doing something a lot more exciting these days!     

What’s your favorite book?  

It’s hard to pick a favorite book, but I recently (and finally!) read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and stayed up far too late to finish it. The writing and the storyline were so compelling. 

What’s something that most people probably don’t know about you?  

While I was an undergraduate, I worked as a server at a colonial tavern in Williamsburg, VA, complete with 18th-century costume. During my senior year, a group of us were hired to be in a commercial to advertise Colonial Williamsburg, but I never got to see if our scenes ever made it to television. 

 

Four newly released research briefs, Parent and Provider Voices on Early Care and Education in North Carolina, present parents’ and providers’ insights into the strengths, needs, and ideas for improvement on four topics:

Parent and provider perspectives come from 18 focus groups comprised of more than 250 diverse parents and child care providers from across the state, including both rural and urban/suburban counties. Focus groups were conducted by the Center for Child and Family Policy, in partnership with the Hunt Institute, as part of the 2023 update to the North Carolina’s Preschool Development (Birth Through Five) Needs Assessment. Development of these briefs was supported by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation.

 

On November 30, I watched the recorded video of the presentation, Revealing the Legacy of Poverty in America, which featured leading poverty researchers Kathryn Edin, William Church Osborne Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs; and Timothy Nelson, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, both at Princeton University. They presented findings from their new book, “The Injustice of Place: Exposing the Legacy of Poverty in America.” The speakers began with the index of deep disadvantage, an introduction to the definition and dimensions of poverty, and then described the mechanisms by which types of poverty are created in the context of the various regions of the United States. The authors pointed to separate and highly unequal schools, loss of social infrastructure, violence, corruption, systemic racism in government policy, elite backlash, and social reproduction as causes of poverty in the United States.

As a Chinese international exchange student in the U.S., my impression of the U.S. has always been synonymous with Silicon Valley or cutting-edge technology, and this glamorous side of the U.S. caused me to overlook the fact that there is a gray part in any society. While it’s widely acknowledged that the U.S. is one of the wealthiest countries globally, it's hard to fathom that it also ranks among the nations with the most significant wealth disparity. When compared to the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a notable finding is that on a key measure of income equality—the Gini coefficient[1]—the U.S. ranked higher than all member countries except Bulgaria, Turkey, Mexico and Costa Rica in recent data. Inequality in the distribution of wealth is more pronounced in Costa Rica and Mexico, but the U.S., as a mature, developed country, is very close to them in terms of inequality, reflecting the political and economic institutions behind the growing inequality in the United States.

The speakers focused on investing in social infrastructure and rooting out corruption as the solution to poverty in the U.S., which reminds me of China's well-lauded and highly successful solution to poverty: the targeted poverty alleviation policy, which focuses on tailoring assistance to specific individuals and regions in need, aiming to lift people out of poverty through precise and customized measures. However, this approach may not work in the United States. This is not only due to the plurality of U.S. politics, the diversity of political parties, and the complexity of regulations, which make it difficult for all levels of government to pursue and follow through on the same policies, but it may also reflect the U.S. culture of individualism, which may lead some to object to over-centralized government assistance, believing that it may diminish the efforts and responsibility of the individual.

Overall, I’m so honored to have had the opportunity to hear such a contextualized analysis of poverty in the U.S., which has given me more comparative thinking about poverty and inequality in a world context.

[1] The Gini coefficient is based on the comparison of cumulative proportions of the population against cumulative proportions of income they receive, and it ranges between 0 in the case of perfect equality and 1 in the case of perfect inequality. More information available at https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm. OECD (2023), Income inequality (indicator). doi: 10.1787/459aa7f1-en (Accessed on 20 December 2023)

Chloe (Jingwen) Zeng is a junior exchange student from Duke Kunshan University majoring in Public Policy Studies (B.A.) with institutions and governance major. She is interested in the role of public sectors in social inequity, with a focus on education policy.

On October 19, Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson and Liv Mann of Princeton University presented the Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture, "Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America." The lecture drew on findings presented in Edin and Nelson's new book, The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America.

Edin is the William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton, and Nelson is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology. The authors were joined by Mann, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in sociology and social policy at the university.

Their discussion commenced with a powerful quote, "Turning our lens from people to places." This quote encapsulated the central theme of their research, challenging the prevailing focus on individuals in poverty to instead consider how the geographic context of their upbringing significantly influences their experience of poverty in the United States.

As someone from Charlotte, North Carolina, where issues of poverty and inequality are often at the forefront of community discussions, I found this new outlook to be refreshing and thought-provoking. The talk shed light on the pressing concerns faced by communities like mine and emphasized the importance of addressing not just individual challenges, but also the systemic and environmental factors that perpetuate poverty. Throughout the talk, Edin, Nelson, and Liv Mann, a team ethnographer, identified five distinct clusters of high disadvantages, primarily concentrated in the Southern United States, particularly in rural areas.

These areas are typically marked by significant challenges, limitations, and difficulties in various aspects of life, such as economic opportunities, education, healthcare, infrastructure, and social well-being. It's intriguing to observe how these communities can become interconnected in a perpetual cycle of poverty, influenced by factors like the loss of social infrastructure, violence, corruption, unequal schools, systemic racism, and elite influence.

However, amid the challenges and adversities, there was a glimmer of hope. Edin and Nelson pointed to individuals who had left these communities, gained education and expertise, and were determined to return and make a positive difference. These individuals were the potential catalysts for change in these disadvantaged regions. In conclusion, the talk reinforced the idea that addressing the legacy of poverty in America requires a multifaceted approach that includes investing in social infrastructure, rooting out corruption, and fostering hope for a better future. Edin and Nelson's work serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of understanding the historical context and the underlying mechanisms that continue to shape the lives of those living in areas of deep disadvantage.

Nya Williams is a junior majoring in Public Policy Studies (B.A.) with minors in Political Science and Economics on the pre-law track. She is interested in the intersection of policy and law, with a focus on education.

Lola James is a first-year dual Master of Public Policy and Master of Business Administration candidate at Duke. She recently joined the CCFP community, working as a research assistant with Katie Rosanbalm on the North Carolina Resilience and Learning Project, which supports trauma-informed education in schools across the state.

Learn more about Lola in our CCFP Community Spotlight Q&A below.

 

What were you doing prior to CCFP?

I was the program manager for a non-profit called The Young African Bookworms Initiative, which helps marginalized children in Northern and Western Nigeria access quality education. The non-profit is the social impact initiative of Noah’s Ark, a top advertising agency in Nigeria.

One of the programs I introduced at the Young African Bookworms Initiative was a social-emotional learning program called the Paragon Training Club. It teaches children coping and resilience skills such as empathy, kindness, mindfulness, respect for other’s opinions, and how to speak up when someone is being oppressed. It’s like lighting a candle in a child so that they can light the next candle and the next.

 

What made you interested in pursuing your master’s degree at Duke?

CCFP first informed my decision to choose Duke because the Center’s Resilience and Learning Project aligned exactly with what I was doing back home, which was introducing a trauma-informed approach to the learning experience in underserved schools.

A second factor in my decision was the fact that I can get two graduate degrees in three instead of four years. Having worked in non-profits all my life, I felt the need to understand how social impact can be sustained in ways that benefit stakeholders in all sectors of an economy. Since I already have the heart for social impact, the MPP/MBA program will help me develop the hand for public policy and the head for business. This way, I’ll be a tri-sector leader working with all sectors to make lasting changes in the lives of people.

I was introduced to Duke by one of my professional mentors, who happens to be the Chairman of World Connect, an American non-profit that funded some of our non-profit’s programs in Nigeria. After I learned of the Duke program, I looked through the website, and the first thing that made me realize that this was where I wanted to be was CCFP, because I connected immediately with the Resilience and Learning Project.

 

How did you connect with Katie Rosanbalm?

I connected with Dr. Rosanbalm for the first time in April via her email on the CCFP website. She was excited to learn that we had a socio-emotional learning program like hers at a non-profit in Nigeria. We set up a virtual meeting two weeks after exchanging a couple of emails. Dr. Rosanbalm encouraged me to reach out as soon as I came to Duke, and that was exactly what I did. In fact, she was the first Duke professor I met after I arrived in the U.S. Our first in-person meeting was amazing. We were literally finishing each other’s sentences and affirming each other’s experience with the trauma-informed programs we ran, albeit on different continents.

The Resilience and Learning Project is exactly like what we were doing at The Young African Bookworms in Nigeria, through the Paragon Training Club. The Club is an afterschool program with essentially the same model – creating more trauma-informed schools and giving children skills to cope with their anger, changes, fears, and whatever trauma they have gone through. Giving kids effective tools to thrive – I hate the term ‘survive’ – to thrive in those kinds of settings.

It is exciting that there could be so much learning both ways – that I could learn so much about what’s working with this CCFP program and help my team incorporate it back home. But also, that I can share experiences from Nigeria that could also improve the Resiliency and Learning Project here.

 

What are you most excited about in terms of the research you’re participating in at CCFP this year?

I’m excited about the fact that I get to contribute. Learning goes both ways and there are lessons I can share from the program back home. Right now, I’m working on developing surveys to help us monitor and evaluate the Resilience and Learning Project in the past year.

I am also excited about the chance to be part of a child’s success story. The fact that today’s child will be tomorrow’s adult with a positive experience. The adult can look back at his childhood and think, “If I didn’t develop those coping skills, my story could have been different, and the outcome might have been worse. I know how to handle anger...  I know how to handle stress... I know how to handle pressure.” That’s what keeps me going.

 

What are you hoping to do after you complete your master’s degrees?

I intend to work in social impact consulting where I can help companies identify opportunities to sustainably solve social impact problems that increase their financial bottom line at the same time.

 

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

It was from my mom when I was about 7 years old. She said, “When you borrow something from someone, return it in a better condition than they gave it to you so that they look forward to lending it to you next time.”

In my work life, I apply my mom’s advice by intentionally leaving my jobs or companies better because I was there. In my relationships, I am deliberate about leaving people better than I met them.

 

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I read self-help books and I like to watch romantic comedies and documentaries. I also like to host friends for home-cooked meals, board games, and interesting conversations.

 

Do you have a favorite movie?

Pretty Woman all the way. I could watch that movie a million times.

 

What’s something that most people at CCFP probably don’t know about you?

That ‘Lola’ is the last four letters of my 15-letter name. My actual name is Oluwafunmilola, a Yoruba name that means “God gave me wealth.”

The Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) project team's research evaluating the effectiveness of Kenya's legal ban on corporal punishment was recognized by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and Sage Publishing. PAC team members received the 2022 Article of the Year Award for their published work in Child Maltreatment.

In the article, "Change in Caregivers’ Attitudes and Use of Corporal Punishment Following a Legal Ban: A Multi-Country Longitudinal Comparison," the team demonstrates that after Kenya passed a ban on corporal punishment, parental use of corporal punishment among study participants significantly decreased.

"One of the exciting aspects of this paper is that at a time when countries are striving to meet the Sustainable Development Goals guiding the international agenda through 2030, this study provides evidence that legal bans of corporal punishment can have the intended effect of reducing violence against children," said co-author Jennifer Lansford.

Among the PAC team include CCFP's Kenneth Dodge, Jennifer Godwin, Drew Rothenberg, Ann Skinner and Center Director Jennifer Lansford.

CCFP student Laura Stilwell, a PhD candidate in the Sanford School of Public Policy, has been awarded a prestigious F30 grant though the NIH's National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The project is titled "The Causal Impact of Poverty Reduction on Housing Conditions of Low-Income, U.S. Children and the Role of Housing and Neighborhood Ecosystems on Young Children's Healthy Development."

Laura’s 2-year NIH-F30 grant will support new work examining housing characteristics, and the neighborhood, during the earliest years of development among children residing in poverty in the U.S. starting at birth. This research will consider configurations of the housing ecosystem including stability, affordability, and quality, and bring in new data on the neighborhood ecosystem among families in the Baby’s First Years study – the largest U.S. based multi-site randomized control trial of a monthly, unconditional cash transfer to families with young children.  The F30 grant will also fund Laura’s last year of medical training. For her research, Laura will be mentored by Drs. Lisa Gennetian (Duke University), Katherine Magnuson (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Kimberly Noble (Teachers College, Columbia University). Dr. J. Nathan Copeland (Duke University) will be her clinical mentor. Laura will be further supported by her dissertation committee (Drs. Kate Bundorf, Manoj Mohanan, and Marcos Rangel, Duke University) and Dr. Jennifer Godwin (Duke University).

On April 20, the Center for Child and Family Policy (CCFP) hosted the School Research Partnership's annual dinner, themed The Power of School-Community-Research Partnerships in Building Student and Educator Wellness.

The dinner featured a panel discussion about the importance of prioritizing a sustained and meaningful focus on collective care, social-emotional wellness, and community-building within schools in order to be successful in fostering academic success. Panelists described the work of the N.C. Center for Resilience & Learning in districts across the state, strategies that have proven most successful for partner schools, and the infrastructure needed to sustain effective practices.

Panelists included: Katie Rosanbalm, Ph.D., senior research scientist at CCFP; Elizabeth DeKonty, M.S.W., director of the N.C. Center for Resilience & Learning at the Public School Forum of North Carolina; Whitney McCoy, Ph.D., research scientist at CCFP, and Angela Mendell, program manager at the N.C. Center for Resilience & Learning at the Public School Forum of North Carolina.

Duke students (pictured below) in the Child Policy Research Certificate program and Jacqueline Morris Fellows also participated in the event to present posters on their research projects.

From left to right, top row: Nicolas Pardo, Kellyn McDonald, Ana DeCesare, Brynn Meyercord, Aspen Martin, Jeslyn Brouwers. 

Bottom row: Annie Hagood Sheeder, Molly Carson, Sarah Zimmerman, Grace Lee.
From left to right, top row: Nicolas Pardo, Kellyn McDonald, Ana DeCesare, Brynn Meyercord, Aspen Martin, Jeslyn Brouwers. Bottom row: Annie Hagood Sheeder, Molly Carson, Sarah Zimmerman, Grace Lee.

Students shared the following reflections on their experience showcasing their research, engaging with community and school leaders, and hearing from panelists.

The School Research Partnership Dinner was an excellent way to culminate my time at Duke as a Child Policy Research student. I got to speak with several community and school leaders who are making a significant impact on the educational landscape in North Carolina, including the CEO of the nonprofit I partnered with for my independent research. After sharing my research and exchanging ideas with them, I got to sit among these leaders and hear my professor and her teammates talk about their incredible work through the North Carolina Center for Resilience & Learning. It has been such a privilege to learn from Dr. Rosanbalm, and it was wonderful to not only learn how to move from research to policy in her class, but to witness her sharing her expertise with local leaders and stakeholders. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in the poster session and dinner!

Annie Sheeder, Jacqueline A. Morris Fellow and Certificate graduate '23
SRP 2023 photos

The opportunity to share my research with community and school leaders in the Durham area and the faculty of the Duke research community was a valuable experience that improved my skills in public speaking, presenting, Q&A, and more. Additionally, I enjoyed brainstorming with current teachers of Durham Public Schools (DPS) about how I could, in a future project, apply the findings from my study to scaffold the group work experience in K-12 DPS classrooms. I likewise took inspiration from the guest speakers, who led me to think about how my research into group work could help improve local and global education by preparing students better to succeed in collaborative workforce environments. Finally, my favorite part of the event was connecting with other student researchers who investigated differing topics in child and family policy to learn more about each person’s research interests while also making new friendships.

Jeslyn Brouwers, Jacqueline A. Morris Fellow '25
SRP 2023 photos (4)

The SRP dinner was a great experience to showcase my research and learn from all of the guests and my peers. I was able to utilize many of the skills I have learned in the Child Policy Capstone regarding presenting academic research. I enjoyed my engaging conversations with many of the attendees regarding full-day preschool, and many of their questions and comments sparked thoughtful conversations and provided ideas for future research. I am grateful to the Center for this opportunity to learn and present the results of my independent study.

Brynn Meyercord, Jacqueline A. Morris Fellow and Certificate graduate '23
SRP 2023 photos (2)

As a Child Policy Research Certificate student, I was proud to present my two semesters of hard work during the poster presentation. I truly enjoyed getting to meet and answer questions from faculty, staff, and community leaders. What made this experience even more special was the opportunity to connect with community leaders who had first-hand experience with the policy challenges outlined in my research, particularly the limited access to telemedicine in rural NC areas. The following panel event on trauma-informed educational practices left a lasting impact on me. Having worked as a work-study student for these projects for the past two years, I had been mainly responsible for analyzing the raw data, so it was exciting to hear how these projects come to life within NC school districts. More broadly, the panel gave me a better understanding of how research and policy initiatives translate into real-world solutions that positively impact children and families.

Molly Carson, Certificate graduate '23
SRP 2023 photos (3)
By Clara Bonzi Teixeira '24

Dr. Shantel Meek, founder of the Children’s Equity Project, joined the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy on March 22, 2023 to discuss her career in child and family policy. Meek’s most recent career move has been to launch the Children's Equity Project (CEP), a multi-university initiative at Arizona State University that focuses on closing opportunity gaps and dismantling systemic racism in learning settings to ensure that children reach their full potential. She came to this work after serving as an early childhood policy advisor in multiple roles during the Obama administration.

Meek volunteered with Obama’s presidential campaign while working as a  clinical interventionist working with youth with autism. At the time, Meek thought she wanted to do intervention work and research and was pursuing a PhD in Family and Human Development at Arizona State University. While in graduate school, Meek visited friends in DC and went on a White House tour. The tour happened to include some White House interns, which was something Meek had never heard about. She learned that there were multiple offices within the White House that utilize interns, and that prior campaign work was a bonus when applying for such positions. Meek returned to Arizona and applied for a White House intern position. She was offered a position and worked with her advisors to make it fit in her PhD timeline. She spent a few months working in the White House in the Presidential Personnel Office, the office responsible for filling political appointments. At the end of her time there, she expressed interest in working as a political appointee if any positions around child and family policy opened up.

By the end of her PhD, Meek realized she saw herself working in the policy arena instead of in clinical settings. Luckily, around this time a political appointment position for a senior policy advisor for early childhood development opened up in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Through her connections at the White House, Meek learned about the position and was able to apply and be appointed. Meek spent the next four and a half years in this role advising the administration on issues in early childhood development. During her time in the administration, Meek worked on policy statements on preschool discipline, the inclusion of children’s with disabilities in preschool settings, and dual language learners, all of which were heavily focused on equity. On all of these issues, in addition to doing research and writing the policy statements, Meek then worked with various federal agencies to embed the work in federal rules, regulations, and laws. She also worked with partners at the state and local level to support work at the those levels.

One of the lessons Meek took from her years working in the federal government is that policy change moves slowly and that progress is more likely if you “jump on existing trains that are moving and figure out how to embed your issue on things that have momentum already.” She said doing this allowed her work to have a bigger and more lasting impact. She pointed to the inclusion of suspension and expulsion within the Child Care Reauthorization bill and the technical assistance put in place to help states and communities enact the recommendations in the policy statements they issued as examples of the lasting impact of her work.

In the talk, Meek emphasized the importance of utilizing one’s network to scope out interesting opportunities. At the end of the Obama administration, Meek left her role the DHHS, where she had been a political appointee. When President Trump entered office, “there was no home, no appetite” for the work she had been doing, Meek admitted. When she reentered the job market a year later after the birth of her first child, she was able to touch base with her former supervisor, who was starting a new wing at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Having this contact allowed Meek to move back into equity work just in a different space.

Networking remained a key priority for Meeks years later when she began the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University. She had never done funding work before, but wanted to continue working on addressing equity in early childhood at the national level. She saw many national organizations working in early childhood, but none that were focused on equity as their core mission. Meek had extensive contacts from her five years in government - this network provided her with a number of resources when she launched the Children’s Equity Project. ASU provided the Project some start-up funds before they got their first grant, and it took off from there, Meek said.

Meek highlighted that for students interested in following her path, there are two main pathways to getting into policy work on administration side: participating in political campaigns and internships. She said she would not have found her path if she had not “taken risks and identified ways to get real world experience…that internship [in the White House] was really huge for me and hugely influential [in my career].”

 

Clara Bonzi Teixeira is a junior majoring in Public Policy (B.A.) with minors in Cultural Anthropology and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She is planning on attending law school and has an interest in international development, with a focus on child and family wellbeing. 

Sarah Komisarow received the Thomas A. Downes Best Paper Award for authoring the top journal article published in 2022 in Education Finance and Policy, the flagship journal of the Association for Education Finance and Policy.

In the paper, "Comprehensive Support and Student Success: Can Out of School Time Make a Difference?," Komisarow finds that students who won random lotteries to enroll in a program offering extra summer and after-school educational and social support had better grades and less chance of being suspended than similar students who did not participate.

“Sarah's groundbreaking study is the first to establish that comprehensive out-of-school support for low-achieving middle school students can be effective in reducing longstanding achievement gaps,” said colleague Charles Clotfelter, Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics and Law at Duke. “Her study applies the soundest statistical methods to a policy challenge of the greatest importance to this country.”

"An exciting side point about Sarah’s excellent paper is that a Sanford School undergraduate played a major role in the development of Student U, the program that she evaluated," added Helen "Sunny" Ladd, Susan B. King Distinguished Professor Emerita of Public Policy at Duke. "Inspired by Tony Brown’s Social Entrepreneurship class and encouraged by my education policy seminar, Dan Kimberg (Class of 2007) took the lead in setting up the program in 2005."

By Clara Bonzi Teixeira, MPP '24

Founder and executive director of Durham Success Summit, Derek Rhodes, PPS ’15, joined the Center for Child and Family Policy on March 3 to talk about his professional journey and why he quit the corporate world to start his own non-profit.

Rhodes has always had a passion for social justice, and began his career in corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. He believes that genuine engagement and community relations should be a main priority for companies and organizations, but found working in this area was challenging. Rhodes described experiencing resistance from the many in the corporate chain of command in organizations he worked for. His experience was that companies set DEI goals but did not seem to adopt the policies and programs needed to make progress towards them. After five years of working with some of today’s hottest companies, Rhodes’ frustration with the corporate world and a sense of burnout led him to leave Microsoft after only three months.

After quitting his job in the midst of covid and the national reckoning over George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement, Rhodes took time to reflect on what mattered to him and what skills he had that could help him address social justice issues head-on. He felt like “nobody was talking about [the fact that young Black men have extremely high unemployment rates].” Rhodes saw this problem in Durham, his hometown, where the vast majority of Black male youth are unemployed. He decided that he wanted to play a more direct role in reversing this trend.

Rhodes decided to use his skills at crafting a compelling resume and narrative about what he brings to an organization to help other young men in Durham. What began as local resume workshops during Covid transformed into Durham Success Summit with Rhodes’ initiative and passion. Durham Success Summit is a nonprofit with a mission to “increase access to business education, mentorship, and professional networking opportunities for young Black men between 16 and 24 years old in Durham.” The organization hosts a business incubator program, which provides entrepreneurial training, mentorship, and seed funding to aspiring full-time entrepreneurs with an idea, and a 12-week accelerator program, which builds practical networking skills and provides scholars access to employers, professional mentors, and opportunities.

Rhodes elaborated on the challenges of starting a non-profit from the ground up, including the role of needing to secure funding. Nonprofits need to raise money and carefully articulate their stories to receive grants and that has been a skill that Rhodes has had to learn. Rhodes reveals that his best strategy to acquire funding has been to utilize his resources, networking events, conferences, and other nonprofits to learn more about grant writing. Having a tight budget pushed Rhodes and his team to learn how to utilize money efficiently and intelligently. Although the work Rhodes does on a day-to-day is different than what he initially imagined his career to look like, the direct impact that he has through his nonprofit is rewarding.

 

Clara Bonzi Teixeira is a junior majoring in Public Policy (B.A.) with minors in Cultural Anthropology and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She is planning on attending law school and has an interest in international development, with a focus on child and family wellbeing. 

by Clara Bonzi Teixeira

The Center for Child and Family Policy welcomed two child advocacy professionals on February 3, 2023, Morgan Forrester Ray, director of the EarlyWell Initiative at NC Child, and Morgan Wittman Gramann, executive director at North Carolina Alliance for Health, for its Career Series. Although Ray and Gramann have had very different career trajectories from one another, they both now work to improve the health and well-being of children and families in North Carolina through policies that reduce health disparities, prevent chronic disease, and promote health, respectively.

During the talk, Ray reflected on the two-year gap she took between her undergraduate and graduate degrees (both in social work), in which she took a job working directly with families as a case manager. While most of her peers went straight to graduate programs, Ray wanted to “understand what it was like for children before [she] started to work on policy.” Ray always knew she had a passion for doing policy work, but she felt that she needed to understand firsthand how children and families experience social services and other interactions with government policies. After nearly a decade, she shifted her career from program-based work to policy-level advocacy work, which allowed her to “see the bigger solutions” and have an even larger impact on children and families in NC.

On the other hand, Gramann started her advocacy work at a young age when she began taking part in tobacco use peer prevention programs in high school. After completing her undergraduate degree, Gramann went directly to law school, but found herself unsure of how to proceed in her career. She “fell in love with [advocacy work] all over again” when she took up a job as a coalition manager at the North Carolina Alliance for Health. Gramann was promoted to Executive Director and has held that role for six years.

In their respective roles, Ray and Gramann engage in both advocacy and lobbying work. While their advocacy work mainly involves creating and supporting partnerships across the state at the local level, their lobbying work involves interacting with policymakers to promote the interests of children and families. Gramann asserted that both types of work are essential to making sure voices are heard at the policymaking level. She talked about the work they have done to learn about priorities in communities across North Carolina and how that has helped focus their current legislative priority advocating for free school meals for all students. However, for organizations who ground their work in community voice, as these do, it often takes years of community building before organizations are able to progress to the lobbying stage: Ray and her colleagues at NC Child spent three years listening to families, engaging stakeholders, and building relationships before beginning their lobbying work.

This Career Series talk demonstrates the diversity of academic and career experiences that can lead to child advocacy work. While Ray and Gramann took vastly different paths in their professional development, they both make measurable impacts on child and family well-being and health in NC. The talk also highlights advocacy and lobbying are critical and engaging paths for those interested in working in the field of child and family policy. Ray and Gramann concluded that policy-level change can be slow, but seeing its impacts is gratifying.

 

Clara Bonzi Teixeira is a junior majoring in Public Policy (B.A.) with minors in Cultural Anthropology and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She is planning on attending law school and has an interest in international development, with a focus on child and family wellbeing.