Zach Laris is a social entrepreneur focused on transforming how we create, craft, and carry out policies for children and families.
Zach designs and builds platforms to make child and family policy more strategic and effective.
He founded Bolder Horizon to support the development of the next generation of cross-partisan child and family policy leaders, ideas, and institutions.
Zach is also the Founder and President of Child Welfare Wonk, a strategic policy intelligence platform serving decision makers in child and family policy.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Zach spent over a decade leading successful national campaigns and building child welfare policy infrastructure at the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Zach has an MPH in Health Policy from The George Washington University, where his capstone focused on federal policy opportunities to improve mental health for youth in foster care. He has a BA in Political Science and International Studies, focused on Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Rob Geen is the founder of CWPolicy LLC, where he uses his passion and expertise to make a difference in the lives of children and families. Over the past 30+ years, Rob has examined every aspect of our nation’s child welfare system including child abuse and neglect investigation, family preservation and family support services, foster care, kinship care, congregate care, independent living programs for foster youth, adoption, financing reform, the intersection of Medicaid and child welfare, and the impact of welfare reform on child welfare systems.
Rob currently directs the Child Welfare Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, working with experts to develop policy recommendations on child welfare financing and accountability, differentiating poverty from neglect, and the appropriate use and timing of termination of parental rights. Over the course of his career, Rob has held leadership roles at the Urban Institute, Child Trends, the House Committee on Ways and Means, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In addition to consulting, Rob serves on a number of advisory groups and is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
Rebecca Robuck is a Partner at ChildFocus, where she leads a range of collaborative work with to advance policy reform. She began her career as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Representative Jim Cooper, where she focused on domestic policy issues affecting children and families, and her experience spans federal and state policy, coalition-building, and strategic advising.
Rebecca currently serves as the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child and Family Well-Being, a coalition of 30+ organizations focused on promoting policy reform to strengthen community-based family support, improve child protection, and promote healing for children and families. She also co-facilitates the Child Welfare Funders Collaborative, a group of fifteen foundations focused on child welfare systems reform with an emphasis on prevention approaches. She serves as a policy advisor to numerous organizations, and she is passionate about integrating the experiences and wisdom of diverse stakeholders into the policymaking process.
Rebecca holds Master’s degrees in Social Work and Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Davidson College. She is also a trained professional coach.