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.
Lynn Johnson is the President of ALL IN Empowering Futures. This non-profit agency focuses on driving national initiatives to empower communities, non-profit agencies, faith-based organizations, government, and businesses to combat the crisis of children aging out of the foster care system, adoption, poverty, and human trafficking. She brings determination, passion, and a strong belief in the dignity of all people no matter the challenge before them.
Prior to this work Mrs. Johnson was the Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families in the US Department of Health and Human Services. In this Senate confirmed position she led a large agency with a budget of over 59 billion dollars and over 60 programs to improve and enhance the lives of our most challenged children, individuals, and families.
As Assistant Secretary, Lynn created the ALL IN for Foster Care and Adoption Challenge as a national call for every state, including governors, agencies, courts, churches, community organizations, foster alumni and the public to commit to being ALL IN for America’s children.
As the Executive Director of Jefferson County Department of Human Services in Colorado she used a comprehensive lens to provide dignity and respect for our most vulnerable members of the community to end poverty, eliminate abuse and neglect and stop the trafficking of children. Appointed to numerous committees, her expertise ranges from child welfare to welfare reform and criminal justice. Mrs. Johnson has won numerous awards for Excellence in successful transformations of Human Services and customer service.
Prior to this position, Mrs. Johnson ran her own firm consulting on issues pertaining to mental health, high risk youth, developmental disabilities, child welfare and early childhood education. She was Chief of Staff to Lieutenant Governor Jane E. Norton and was Deputy Director for Policy as well as Policy Advisor on Human Services issues to Governor Bill Owens.
Lynn has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado and a master’s degree in Social Work from Arizona State University. She is a graduate of the Federal Judicial Center National Leadership Development Program and the Senior Executives in State and Local Government through the Harvard Kennedy School for Executive Education. She has been married for 40 years and has three adult children, an amazing daughter-in-law, a 2 year old granddaughter and more than 150 foster alumni in her heart.
Brian Widuch currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary at the Maryland Department of Human Services, focusing on strategies to promote economic mobility and family well-being for all Marylanders.
From 2015 to 2025, Brian served served in the White House Office of Management and Budget, overseeing social services programs including child welfare programs under the Children's Bureau, refugee resettlement, and SNAP. In this capacity, Brian worked as a nonpartisan expert for the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations developing budgets, reviewing and approving regulations, and developing and implementing policy agendas.
Brian played a key role in developing the Biden Administration's child welfare policy agenda and in the domestic resettlement of Afghans under Operation Allies Welcome. He also served as a Director of Strategic Planning in the National Security Council during the Biden Administration. Brian received his undergraduate degree and Masters in Public Policy from the George Washington University in Washington, DC. He lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife Maggie.