David J. Pate, Jr. is the inaugural Equity and Justice scholar in residence at the School of Human Ecology, School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Visiting Associate Professor in the coming academic year. He is an Affiliated Associate Professor of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Affiliated Associate Professor, Department of African and African Diaspora Studies and Faculty Affiliate, University Honors College. Prior to entering the world of academia, he was a practicing social worker for sixteen years in the areas of direct practice, administration, and policy advocacy.

 

Professor Pate’s research projects involve examining the life course events of low-income Black males. He is a nationally known expert on non-custodial fathers and their interaction with the child support enforcement system. Recent research projects focus on Black fathers and their role in the reduction of infant mortality, the impact of trauma on the employment outcomes for Black fathers, the Guaranteed Basic Income Project (GROW) for welfare-reliant parents and documenting the policy challenges of formerly incarcerated Black men returning to their communities.

 

In 2010, he served as one of the social scientists for the law firm of Wilmerhale (Washington, D.C) on a U.S. Supreme Court case (Turner v Rogers, 564 U.S. 431) which focused on non-custodial parents, right to counsel, and incarceration in child support proceedings. 

 

Professor Pate received a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Detroit, a Master of Arts in Social Work from the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration and then earned a Ph.D. in Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

 

Kimberly Seals Allers is an award-winning journalist, five-time author, international speaker, strategist, and advocate for maternal & infant health. A former senior editor at ESSENCE and writer at FORTUNE magazine, Kimberly is a leading voice on the racial and socio-cultural complexities of birth, breastfeeding, and motherhood. She is the founder of Irth, a new "Yelp-like" app for Black and brown parents to address bias and racism in maternity and infant care. Kimberly also created Birthright, a podcast about joy and healing in Black birth that centers on positive Black birth stories as a tool in the fight for birth justice and reverses the narrative of negative statistics common in mainstream media coverage of Black maternal health. Learn more at KimberlySealsAllers.com. Follow her @iamKSealsAllers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Grace C. Bonilla, Esq. is a long-time public servant with several leadership positions in the non-profit and government sectors. Grace is currently the President and CEO of the United Way of New York City and has been in that position since July of 2022. At United Way, Grace and her team focus on breaking systemic barriers, through their Education Equity, Health Equity, Justice and Opportunity and Food and Benefits programs. 

 

Grace also served as Senior Vice President for Latin America at Covenant House International (CHI) where she worked with homeless youth. Prior to joining CHI, Grace served as the first Executive Director of the Task force on Racial Equity and Inclusion, where she led a cross section of 80 city leaders and came up with recommendations to assist the neighborhoods hardest hit by the COVID19 pandemic. Grace was appointed in February 2017 as Administrator of the Human Resources Administration (HRA) where she was responsible for working alongside the Commissioner of the Department of Social Services in leading the largest local social services agency in the country. 

Rachel has dedicated her legal career to passionate advocacy for gender justice and access to justice for all. She is the Director of Policy at Her Justice, where she leads policy reform and advocacy efforts relating to economic justice for women living in poverty and their families, the rights of gender-based violence survivors and immigrants, and access to justice and court reform. Prior to Her Justice, Rachel was an Associate in the Litigation Department at Fried Frank. Rachel first learned about the power of legislative advocacy and strategy as a member and then Chair of the Sex and Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association from 2004 to 2011. Rachel was proud to serve on the Board of Directors of the YWCA Brooklyn from 2014 to 2020, including as Vice Chair.

 

Rachel holds a B.A. from Boston College and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.

As Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Research & Policy Innovation in the NYC Department of Social Services (DSS), Kinsey Dinan manages four units that provide critical policy-related information and insight to agency leadership: Evaluation & Research, Homeless Policy & Innovation, Government Grants Strategy, and the DSS McMillan Library. Through rigorous research, program evaluation, grant development and monitoring, and information services, Kinsey’s office supports demonstration projects and informs decision-making across a wide range of social services programs, including TANF and Safety Net cash assistance, SNAP, child support services, HIV/AIDS services, Adult Protective Services, rental assistance and other homelessness prevention programs, civil legal services, family and single adult homeless shelters, and street homelessness outreach.

 

Kinsey’s team additionally serves as point on all cross-agency and public-private research collaborations involving DSS programs and as lead for the NYC Continuum of Care, providing support to a broad network of homeless services providers and managing reporting to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to joining DSS in 2009, Kinsey’s research at the National Center for Children in Poverty focused on federal and state supports for low-income working families, child poverty and poverty measurement, and children in immigrant families. Kinsey's other areas of expertise include national immigration policy, trafficking in migrant women, and related international human rights standards. 

 

Kinsey holds a master’s degree in International Relations from Yale University and a B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Demond Drummer has committed his life to building a more just, equitable and sustainable economy. A proven strategist and innovator with a track record of developing solutions, building teams, and delivering results, Demond’s leadership—in policy development, program design, technology and innovation—has been recognized by the Obama White House, Code for America, and the Aspen Institute.

 

Demond is Director of Strategy at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Prior to The New School Demond has worked with national organizations such as PolicyLink, where he served as Managing Director for Equitable Economy, and New Consensus, where he served as co-founder and executive director. While at New Consensus he worked to develop and promote the Green New Deal, a transformative vision that shifted US public discourse on climate action.

 

Prior to his national work, Demond distinguished himself as a civic innovator on the South Side of Chicago. With a body of work spanning youth leadership development, land use planning, and community technology, Demond responded to the aspirations of his community by developing innovative programs, building people power, and delivering policy change.

 

Demond earned a BA in economics from Morehouse College and an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he studied religion and public life. Demond is deeply committed to his adopted hometown of Chicago. He is a co-founder and board member of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) and serves as a board member of South Shore Works. Demond lives in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood with his wife and three children.

 

Demond’s work and analysis has appeared in national publications and media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico and MSNBC.

Alan S. Farrell is the Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Parent and Community Engagement of the New York City Human Resource Administration’s Office of Child Support Services (OCSS).

As the leader of Customer Service and Correspondence arm of OCSS, his office successfully handles tens of thousands in correspondence including mail, e-mails, texts, and phone inquiries, to ensure that all parent inquiries are addressed, and noncustodial custodial parents are directed to debt reduction and employment programs for which they are eligible. He also ensures that the approximately 40,000 parents who seek services from our Customer Services office receive services in an empathetic, holistic and timely manner. He develops relationships across the aisle with Mayoral agencies, community-based organizations, religious organizations, and local colleges/universities. His efforts to establish community initiatives for veterans, shelter residents, incarcerated noncustodial parents and other noncustodial parents is integral to connecting noncustodial parents to employment programs and to addressing child support debt owed by many low-income noncustodial parents. Additionally, from the onset of the pandemic until now he has led the transition of OCSS’ Customer Service’s unit from a walk In center to a full service entity that now also addresses parent’s needs by email and phone.

 

Previously, Alan served as the City’s first fatherhood services coordinator in the Mayor’s Office’s Young Men’s Initiative. In that role he worked with a dozen City agencies to maximize opportunities to engage fathers in the lives of their children. These agencies had varying levels of capacity to make father engagement a priority as well as other competing priorities. He worked to build relationships with those stakeholders and where it was not already present or in process helped them and their leadership see how developing more father friendly policies and practices aligned with their organization’s mission. He worked with them to capture and report the progress they made in transforming their practice to ensure that fathers were increasingly involved in the lives of their children in a healthy way. He also lead the development and launch of the CUNY Fatherhood Academy, the City’s first ever community college-based effort to support the growth and development of fathers. In addition, he launched the NYC DADS Matter Awards where over four years the Mayor’s Office and the Young Men’s Initiative welcomed over 2,000 families to Gracie Mansion to honor 40 fathers from around the city who overcame life’s challenges to be involved in the lives of their children.

Dr. Lynne Haney is Professor of Sociology at New York University, where she also directs the Law and Society Undergraduate Program. She has published several award-winning books in social policy, criminology, and law—and has been working on child support and incarceration for over a decade. Her most recent boo­­­k, Prisons of Debt: The Afterlives of Incarcerated Fathers, examines the criminalization of child support in the contemporary U.S. and its effects on men’s lives as parents. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Fulbright New Century Scholars Program. 

Coach Stevan Lynn, Founder and CEO of Deeds Driven Dads Inc., the premier international responsible fatherhood advocacy, training and outreach program, Founder and CEO of the Caribbean Fatherhood Coalition supporting a network of emerging fatherhood initiatives and supportive NGO’s through a host of services and trainings including the upcoming Caribbean Fatherhood Summit to be held in St. Lucia, Former OECS Global Ambassador to the Sustainable Development Movement {2019 & 2020}, Chief Architect & Sponsor of the International Fatherhood educational event 'Dads Take Your Child to School Day’, engaging over 200,000+ fathers and father figures in its {15} year history, Founder and CEO of the innovative young male mentorship initiative “The Future Fathers Club” now in multiple OECS member states, Chief Training Officer in the coveted Fatherhood Emergency Response Training Program, Retired American Football Head Coach, Entrepreneur and current Interim Executive Director for the North American MenEngage Network, an affiliate of the Global Secretariat MenEngage, charged with engaging men and boys in nurturing masculinity practices, gender equality, non-violence against women and children, responsible fatherhood while furthering the mission in addressing decolonization / intersectionality across the United States and Canada. 

 

A dedicated father, grandfather and brother to the community, Coach Lynn’s philosophy is deeply rooted in the truth...”Fatherhood is Deeds not Words!” 

Solangel Maldonado is the Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law where she writes and teaches in the areas of family law, gender, race, and their intersections. Her article “Deadbeat or Deadbroke: Redefining Child Support for Poor Fathers,” 39 UC Davis Law Review 991 (2006), was one of the first articles to explore how child support policies may harm children’s relationships with low-income fathers. She is an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law and the author of Racial Hierarchy and Desire: How Law’s Influence on Interracial Intimacies Perpetuates Inequality (NYU Press forthcoming 2024). She is also the co-editor of two casebooks—Family Law: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 7th ed. 2019) and Family Law in the World Community (Carolina Academic Press, 3^rd ed. 2015). She serves on the editorial board of the American Bar Association’s Family Law Quarterly and as Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey Law and Education Empowerment Project (NJ LEEP), a pipeline and college access program for middle and high school students from underserved communities. 

 

Prior to joining the Seton Hall faculty, she clerked for United States District Court Judge Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. and was a litigation associate with two law firms—Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler, LLP and Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood. She received her B.A. from Columbia College and her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and the Managing Editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. She has taught at Cardozo Law School, the University of Illinois College of Law, and Columbia Law School, where she was a visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of Law and Culture.

 

Coley is the father of two beautiful girls. He had his first daughter when he was 18 and his second daughter nine years later. Life has blessed him with two lovely girls and he wouldn’t replace them for anything in the world. 

 

Previously Coley served as the Fatherhood Program facilitator for the Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP). Before RAP came to a close, the program empowered youth by increasing their access to legal information and legal advocacy assistance in the areas of public benefits, child care, education, housing, employment, consumer education, and teen parenthood, including paternity, child support, and parents' rights. Within RAP, Coley served as a credible messenger to other young people in the community and delivered co-parenting curricula to young parents in the program. His work was part of an effort to help young people gain access to family court, legal rights information the tools needed to address social justice issues such as the bureaucracy of child support and family court.