Advisor Biographies
INCARCERATION
ANN ADALIST-ESTRIN, M.S., is Director of the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated in Philadelphia. She is also a child and family therapist in Jenkintown, PA, a trainer for Boston University Medical School/Healthy Steps for Young Children Pediatric Training Program. Ann is an author, speaker and consultant who has held adjunct faculty positions at Rutgers University Camden, Temple University and Community College of Philadelphia.
CAROL F. BURTON, L.M.S.W., is the Executive Director of Centerforce,a nonprofit organization in Northern and Central California whose mission is to support, educate, and advocate for individuals, families, and communities impacted by incarceration. Before joining Centerforce, Carol served for six years as Associate Executive Director of the Osborne Association in NYC where she developed, strengthened, and oversaw all of Osborne's in-prison and community-based family and reentry services programs. In February 2003, Carol became a Certified Master Trainer in facilitating A Framework for Breaking Barriers, a cognitive behavioral approach developed by Gordon Graham & Company, and in August 2004, she piloted the first marriage-education program for couples at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, NY. Carol implemented the country's first comprehensive program and longitudinal study on children of incarcerated parents. Carol is the Co-Chair and Coordinator of Alameda County's Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership and the immediate past Chair of Family & Corrections Network (FCN), the home of the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated. She is certified to lead the foremost curriculum for training mentors of children of prisoners developed by the Child Welfare League. Carol has authored numerous articles on children of the incarcerated, produced four video training curriculums, as well as a replication manual for Project S.E.E.K. and a Parent Training Manual for Incarcerated Adults.
ELIZABETH GAYNES, J.D., is Executive Director of the Osborne Association. Under her leadership over the last 29 years, Osborne has grown from a 2-person staff to one of the largest multi-service criminal justice organizations in the country. Osborne currently offers services in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Dutchess County, New York, as well as 20 state prisons and four city jails on Rikers Island. In 1985, utilizing the lessons learned from the incarceration of her children’s father, Liz spearheaded the creation of FamilyWorks, the longest-running comprehensive parenting program in a men’s state prison. Liz has a leadership role in the New York Initiative on Children of Incarcerated Parents, a collaborative system reform project committed to meeting the needs and protecting the rights of children of incarcerated parents. In 2004, together with her daughter, Emani Davis, Liz was the first American ever nominated for the prestigious international World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child, for their work defending the rights of children with parents in prison. She is the author of Reentry: Helping Former Prisoners Return to Communities, a guide published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (2006). Liz is a lawyer and has a BA and JD from Syracuse University.
Dr. Kirk E. Harris is a faculty member in the Department of Urban Planning, School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Dr. Harris has been working on issues related to families and communities for 20 years, as a Legal Services lawyer, a non-profit executive, a community advocate, and as a national keynote speaker. During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Dr. Harris served on then Sen. Obama’s Metropolitan and Urban Policy Committee, charged with managing the campaign's public policy platform. For four years, Dr. Harris served as the national facilitator for the National Fatherhood Leaders Group, a consortium of the country’s leading fatherhood organizations. In addition to that role, Dr. Harris has worked closely with White House staff of the Obama administration and other national leaders on issues related to fathers and families. Dr. Harris is considered a national expert in the areas of public policy related to responsible fatherhood, family support practice, community building and development, parent-engagement and leadership and anti-poverty strategies. In his capacity as a national expert, Dr. Harris has testified before Congress on issues related to fatherhood, family strengthening and community building. Dr. Harris is presently co-leading Father, Families and Healthy Communities, a citywide initiative in Chicago, that seeks to strengthen the engagement of low-income non-custodial African-American fathers with their children, families and communities.
Amongst his most recent publications, Dr. Harris is a contributor to a book on the Hope VI project, published by the Urban Institute, entitled, “Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation.” Dr. Harris' chapter entitled, Fathers from the Family to the Fringe: Practice, Policy, and Public Housingexamines how service delivery practices and public policy limit father engagement and involvement within their families in the context of public housing. Also, Dr. Harris has recently published an article in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Education entitled, Project SAVE (Stop All Violence with Education): Creating a Global Non-violence Youth Movement through Education and Technology.
Also an advocate for youth development, Dr. Harris is the Founder of the School for Urban Planning and Architecture (SUPAR), a project-based charter high school that is linked to the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. SUPAR served urban youth by connecting them to a project-based learning environment that sought to engage students in new ways, with the objective of enhancing student retention and high school completion rates, thus enabling students to pursue post-secondary educational and training opportunities that would allow them to secure their future. The Wisconsin Daily Reporter named Dr. Harris Architectural Leader and Newsmaker of the Year for his work related to the charter school.
Dr. Harris possesses a master of public administration degree from the Martin School of Public Policy and Public Administration, University of Kentucky, a law degree from Thomas Jefferson Law School and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Dr Harris is a member of the Georgia, Washington, DC and US Supreme Court Bars.
JULIE POEHLMANN, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an investigator at the Waisman Center, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty. Through numerous publications, she has brought the attention of the child-development and family-studies communities to the issue of parental incarceration. Her research with children of incarcerated parents has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Poehlmann recently co-edited a book, Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners, and a special issue of the journal Attachment and Human Development focusing on children of incarcerated parents. Locally, Dr. Poehlmann helped Wisconsin Public Television develop its caregiver guide for children affected by parental methamphetamine addiction, taught a child-development course that was broadcast on public television for several years, and developed an award-winning outreach Web-based publication series for grandparents raising their grandchildren in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin–Extension.