LA County Child Welfare Funders Collaborative Meeting February

Susan Abrams

Policy Director, Children’s Law Center

Susan Abrams has been working at CLC since 2005. She began her career implementing an Equal Justice Works fellowship project, where she sought to reduce the rate of dependent youth entering the juvenile justice system. Following her fellowship, Ms. Abrams worked as a staff attorney for several years until she transitioned from the courtroom to focus on macro level policy work. She now serves as CLC’s Director of Policy and Training – developing and strategizing CLC’s public policy priorities and legislative advocacy efforts at the local, state and national levels.  In addition to Ms. Abrams’ work with CLC, she has served as President of the Board for Happy Trails for Kids, a non-profit that she co-founded that provides overnight summer camp for children in foster care. Ms. Abrams earned a BA from UC Berkeley in 2001 and a JD from Harvard Law School in 2005.

Carrie Miller

Assistant Executive Director, Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection

Carrie Dunbar Miller is the Assistant Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection where she leads a variety of initiatives in the areas of prevention, child safety, and data sharing. Previously, she served as the Manager for the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office’s Service Integration Branch (SIB), overseeing the Countywide Gang Strategy, Education Coordinating Council, Information Technology Infrastructure Development Unit, Research and Evaluation Unit, Contracting and Administrative Support Unit, Housing and Homeless Unit, and various initiatives integrating services for system-involved youth across departments. Before joining SIB, she served as the Director of the Los Angeles County Education Coordinating Council, a collaborative body charged with raising the educational achievement of foster and probation youth. Prior to that, she served as the Education Program Director for United Friends of the Children, working with foster and probation youth ages 12 to 23 on getting them to and through 4-year colleges/universities. Miller received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Howard University.

Karen D. Richardson, LCSW

Deputy Director, Administrative Support Bureau, Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services

Karen began her service with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in 1989 as a Children’s Social Worker in the Adoption Division. She has gone on to serve in leadership positions in DCFS’ Adoption and Permanency Resources Division and Out-of-Home Care Management Division, as well as the Juvenile Court and Adoptions Bureau, where she was responsible for managing three countywide divisions: Juvenile Court Services, Resource Family Recruitment and Approval, and the Resource Family Support and Permanency Divisions.  In July 2020 Karen was assigned to lead the Administrative Support Bureau, which includes the Contracts Administration Division, Out-of-Home Care Management Division, Continuous Quality Improvement Division, Policy, Leadership and Staff Development Division, and Facilities Management.

Karen received a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from the University of California, at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Southern California (USC). She is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in the state of California.

She is committed to fostering positive outcomes for children while endeavoring to support caregivers, service providers and staff.

Winnie Wechsler

Executive Director, The Anthony & Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation

Winnie Wechsler is executive director of the Anthony & Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation (www.ajpff.org), which for over a decade has been investing in strengthening many of the unique institutions that define Los Angeles.  The Foundation aims to enrich our community not just for the present, but for generations to come, with particular focus on medicine, higher education, the environment, and the arts. In 2014, the foundation launched Pritzker Foster Care Initiative to highlight its commitment to supporting transition age foster youth and the families that care for them.

Winnie’s interest in the potential of technology to improve child welfare stems from her decades of experience in both the public and private sectors.  Before joining the Foundation in 2012, Ms. Wechsler served as executive director of Phoenix Houses of California, a substance abuse treatment and mental health services organization, for nine years. Before working in non-profit management, Ms. Wechsler worked for twenty years in media and communications, including serving as a senior executive at The Walt Disney Company for 14 years. While at Disney, she headed up new business development for the Disney Channel and started up and managed Disney.com.  In 1999, she left Disney to launch Lightspan, an education technology start-up that she helped take public in 2000.

Ms. Wechsler is a board member of Foster Care Counts, a non-profit started by Jeanne Pritzker, which helps raise awareness and serve the needs of foster youth and families in Los Angeles. She has lived with her family for over 20 years in Santa Monica, where she is a commissioner on the City of Santa Monica’s Social Service Commission and a member of the Executive Steering Committee of Community for Excellent Public Schools.  She holds a BA from Wellesley College in Russian Studies and an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.