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Why is the Annie E. Casey Foundation CEO and president so good at what she does? It’s simple – or at least she makes it look that way – she is innately adept and extraordinarily experienced in identifying and addressing issues for distressed populations. She has developed a razor-sharp understanding of the needs of young people and how to develop and hone strategies to address the challenges. In short, she is a champion.
In an exclusive interview with the architect of Thrive by 25® — a groundbreaking effort aligning the Casey Foundation’s work in child welfare and juvenile justice reform, to improve outcomes for adolescents ages 14 to 24 — Lawson outlined pressing issues for America’s young people.
“We see how the safety net is being challenged at this moment with changes to Medicaid and SNAP and housing. The path to higher education gets ever more expensive and challenging for young people. AI is changing jobs … and far too many young people end up in systems like child welfare and juvenile justice, that separate them from people who love them,” Lawson explained.
“The good news is that we know how to do this. We know how to help young people connect to adults who care about them. We know what safety net support young people need. We just need the sort of will and collective action to put the pieces together for them,” she adds with enthusiasm.
Lawson, an attorney by trade and an activist by nature, is uniquely positioned to make significant impact in segments of society that have been neglected, passed over and marginalized by yesteryear thinking and conventional response method.
As a law student, Lawson provided legal on Michigan’s first community land trust project for affordable housing whose career has come full circle in the affordable housing arena while tapping into the real needs of youth struggling to survive.
Prior to joining the prestigious Foundation, the ambitious advocate enjoyed a 14-year career at UPS, where she held several leadership roles, including president of the UPS Foundation and vice president of corporate public relations.
In 2019 Lawson joined the Annie E. Casey Foundation – where her nonprofit and corporate expertise, have expanded the heralded Casey foundations impact and advanced new strategies to support child well-being.
Before taking the helm at what one of the nation’s major private philanthropy organization’s dedicated to helping build better futures for millions of children and youth, Lawson served as the Foundation’s executive vice president and chief program officer, where she led all grant-making efforts. Earlier, as vice president of external affairs, she directed Casey’s work in data, research, and policy to help children reach their full potential.
During her extraordinary tenure Lawson has launched several initiatives to maximize Casey’s impact on economic opportunity and community development to improve outcomes for Generation Z with Thrive by 25 at the center of the Foundation’s drive to shore up communities and young people in an ever changing political and social landscape.
“Thrive by 25 focuses on five areas we need to make sure all young people need to thrive. They’ve got their basic needs met, they’ve got have caring adults in their lives, they’ve got to [have] opportunities to gain skills and credentials that will give them a future career, and they have to learn how to manage money,” she explained. “And more importantly, they have to learn how to be leaders in their own lives and in their communities,” Lawson adds.
Lawson’s influence in the field has been widely recognized. She was named one of Inside Philanthropy’s 50 most powerful women in U.S. philanthropy in 2023 and has appeared multiple times on The Nonprofit Times’ Power & Influence Top 50 list.
Beyond her work at Casey, Lawson serves on several national boards, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and is an advisory board member for Twilio.org. She is also active in the Foundation’s hometown, serving on the boards of Baltimore’s Promise and the Greater Washington Partnership.
“Young people have survived a global pandemic. None of us did that as a young person. That fundamentally changed so much of their childhood, and so many of them are dealing with issues that have gone untreated or unaddressed. We got to figure out how to put the floor back under young people, so that they can succeed,” concluded Lawson.
Lawson’s book, Thrive: How the Science of the Adolescent Brain Helps Us Imagine a Better Future for All Children provides a blueprint to understanding the minds of young people. Rather than seeing adolescence as a turbulent or risky phase, she presents it as a period of potential — a “second window” of brain development ripe for investment and care.
For more information on the book, the science, and the author visit: https://www.aecf.org/thrivebook
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