Joan Smith

My career in child welfare spans 41 years, with the last 19 years focused on child welfare philanthropy. I've always worked on the business side of operations rather than as a social worker. I started in what was called a Purchase the Service office, where we purchased services for the government across different human services areas, with child welfare being one of them. My approach has been from a business perspective, focusing on contractual and financial work to make things happen. I have a master's in business administration, and even though I'm in the social services arena, I think those business skill sets have been really important in my career and have helped bring direction and structure to helping these systems do better. One of my proudest accomplishments was leading an 8-year project related to helping as many states as possible take advantage of a financial waiver for funding in child welfare, which resulted in legislation that opened up funding for prevention. In my current role at the foundation, my responsibilities include working on operations to ensure all contracts are done effectively and properly, managing all financial budgeting and payments, overseeing data collection from multiple sources and analyzing it to track trends in child welfare, and cultivating and maintaining national partners across the country in the child welfare space to collectively try to move positive change for outcomes for kids and families.