Wendy Lazarus is Co-Founder of and Senior Advisor to The Children’s Partnership (TCP), a national, nonprofit organization founded in 1993 to advance the interests of America’s children and families—especially those at risk of being left behind. In 2015, she co-led an executive transition, turning over leadership of the organization to Mayra Alvarez, the current President of TCP.

Ms. Lazarus is a leading advocate and policy expert on a wide range of children’s issues, having spent more than 40 years working on the front lines for children across the nation. Throughout the years, she has helped secure improved health care, child support, access to information technologies and other vital resources for hundreds of thousands of children and families.

Through her leadership at The Children’s Partnership, digital opportunity for children has become a forefront policy issue in the United States. Ms. Lazarus helped secure first-in-the-nation technology policy gains in California that directed technology resources and training to underserved children and their families.

She also carried out pioneering work on the content dimension of the digital divide, having co-authored the first comprehensive report on Internet content from the standpoint of the needs of underserved Americans. The Children’s Partnership also developed a portal to help low-income and underserved communities use and create online content and produced a widely used Parent’s Guide to the Internet.

In addition, Ms. Lazarus has worked to ensure that every child in America has access to quality health care and has led a number of health reform efforts, including major improvements in the federal Medicaid program for children. While at TCP, she helped create and lead the 100% Campaign, a California-based effort which succeeded in its goal of enabling all children to get health coverage. With Ms. Lazarus’s leadership, The Children’s Partnership also spearheaded the creation and roll-out of Express Lane Eligibility, pioneering a way to use technology to expedite enrollment in public health insurance programs for hundreds of thousands of uninsured children through other public programs in which they are already enrolled. Ms. Lazarus also developed the next frontier in health care for children—the deployment of new technologies such as telehealth to improve children’s health.

Prior to founding The Children’s Partnership, she served as the Children’s Defense Fund’s first national Director of Health, as founding Vice-President for Policy at Children Now, and as a consultant to the Conrad Hilton and Piton Foundations.

Laurie Lipper is Co-Founder of and Senior Advisor to The Children’s Partnership (TCP), a national, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1993 to advance the interests of America’s children and families—especially those at risk of being left behind. In 2015, she co-led an executive transition, turning over leadership of the organization to Mayra Alvarez, the current President of TCP.

Her work at The Children’s Partnership has been recognized for its foresight and leadership, especially in the area of children and digital media. In 1994, she co-authored the first comprehensive report on how digital society impacts children, followed by co-authoring an award-winning, first-of-its-kind parenting resource for the information age. In the following years, she authored multiple publications about children and the digital society and led the development of several digital projects including the first website focused on creating content for low-income Americans. She created and managed communications for many successful advocacy campaigns, securing increased health care and dental care for California’s children, the expansion of next-generation technologies for health care through telehealth, and numerous efforts to close the digital divide.

Ms. Lipper was founding Vice President for Communications at Children Now, a California-based policy organization, where she developed groundbreaking communications strategies for child advocacy. Her work at Children Now included several innovations such as fashioning the marketing elements and releasing, in 1989, the first California Report Card on how the state’s children are faring. This technique spawned a generation of data-based accountability tools supported by communications presentations and messaging in child advocacy. She also developed a model media and communications program for children’s issues, including public opinion research projects, the blending of policy and communications outcomes in strategy development, and the creative development and production of the print, digital, and video advocacy tools for the organization.

Previously, she was Deputy Campaign Manager for a California campaign reform initiative, Proposition 68, and Marketing Director of Hands Across America, a one-of-a-kind mega-event that raised awareness and funds to alleviate hunger and homelessness. She served as Executive Director of The Nation Institute, a New York-based organization that promotes civil liberties and debate on foreign and domestic policy.

Throughout her career, Ms. Lipper has fostered innovative approaches to advocacy. She has been adept at anticipating emerging issues and developing them into advocacy platforms. At The Children’s Partnership, she also honed the structure of the organization to support 22 years of co-leadership and a virtual organization with multiple offices. She has worked to recruit and mentor young advocates interested in pioneering new approaches to advocacy and she has designed organizational structures to support innovation.

In 2017, Laurie Lipper co-founded Kids Impact Initiative, a nonprofit project started to improve the lives of the nation’s 74 million children. After more than three decades as an advocacy organization executive, Ms. Lipper launched Kids Impact to support and strengthen the child advocacy field as a whole. Kids Impact analyzes advocacy trends and lessons across a broad range of issues, advancing new ways to reinforce effective efforts already underway and ratchet up accountability and advocacy for children. Currently, Ms. Lipper serves on the Washington Advisory Council of Common Sense Media. She is an accomplished speaker to schools and parent groups, and to the media. Ms. Lipper received her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and resides in Washington, D.C.

Mayra E. Alvarez, MHA is President of The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit advocacy organization working to advance child health equity by ensuring all children have the resources and opportunities they need to grow up healthy and lead productive lives. In 2023, she was nominated by California Governor Gavin Newsom to serve on the Covered California Board of Directors, and in 2019, to serve on the Early Childhood Policy Council. In 2021, she was named by President Biden to the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. Since 2017, Ms. Alvarez has served on the California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC), nominated by Attorney General Rob Bonta in 2021 and previously by then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra in 2017.

Prior to The Children’s Partnership, Ms. Alvarez completed a several-year set of assignments at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the administration of President Barack Obama. She served as the Director of the State Exchange Group for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and led a team responsible for supporting states in the establishment of Health Insurance Marketplaces.  Previously, Ms. Alvarez served as the Associate Director for the HHS Office of Minority Health, where she led the coordination of OMH’s work related to the Affordable Care Act, community health workers, and language access. Prior to this role, Ms. Alvarez served as Director of Public Health Policy in the Office of Health Reform at HHS where she had primary oversight responsibility for coordinated and timely implementation of the public health, prevention, and health care workforce policy provisions in the Affordable Care Act.

Before joining the Obama Administration, Ms. Alvarez served as a Legislative Assistant for Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and for then-Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (D-CA). Ms. Alvarez began her professional career as a David A. Winston Health Policy Fellow in the office of then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL).

She completed her graduate education at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her undergraduate education at the University of California at Berkeley. She is originally from outside San Diego, CA, and is the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants.

Amanda Conlee brings over 15 years of nonprofit leadership experience, having overseen multimillion-dollar budgets, built strong cross-functional teams, and implemented systems that drive both mission and sustainability. Most recently, Amanda served as Chief Operations Officer at IGNITE, where she led strategic planning, operational development, and finance, helping the organization grow its national reach and build out its infrastructure to support substantial growth opportunities for the future. Deeply committed to equity and community-based work, Amanda thrives on building mission-oriented environments where teams can collaborate, innovate, and grow to achieve the highest level of impact. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Outside of work, Amanda enjoys adventuring with her wife and dog, long-distance hiking, and sports of all kinds (especially the Dodgers).

Sarah Dar is Vice President of Policy and Advocacy, leading our efforts in these areas to support the organization’s mission and strategy.

Sarah received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and master’s in public health from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She has organized dozens of state and local campaigns for racial and economic justice; led outreach and enrollment following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act; and worked in the navigator program at MNSure, Minnesota’s state health insurance exchange. Before joining TCP, Sarah served as the policy director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, where she led coalitions advocating for immigrant justice across a range of policy areas.

Faith Colburn (she/her) is Advocacy Director, Health Care, for The Children’s Partnership focusing on advancing child health equity in health care coverage, access, quality and delivery.

Prior to joining TCP, Faith served as Senior Consultant and Director of Public Affairs at top public affairs firms, and as Director of Policy & Advocacy at national civil rights organization The Gathering for Justice. Prior to her work at Gathering, she held the role of Senior Policy Advocate and lobbyist for the Alliance of Child and Family Services, where she channeled her lived experience and passion to fight for equitable access to education, affordable health care, and opportunity for system-impacted youth. She has also previously worked in the California State Senate as a Consultant under former Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins, serving as her liaison to the Senate Democrat offices on issues related to health care, housing and child welfare. Faith has also managed strategic communications for progressive political campaigns while serving as both a teacher and anti-bias curriculum director.

As an LGBTQ+ community organizer, she also sits on the Planning Committee and Youth Justice Committee of the Sacramento Kids First Coalition. In 2021, she was elected to be External Affairs Director for the Capitol LGBTQ Association and is the Board Chair and President of the Stonewall Foundation, a nonprofit focused on supporting the holistic needs of LGBTQ+ youth and students.

Faith holds bachelor’s degrees in women & gender studies, political science, and child & adolescent development, as well as a Master of Public Policy (MPP), a Master of Public Administration (MPA), and an honors certification in data analysis and management from American University in Washington, D.C.

Faith currently lives in Riverside with her husband and their dog, Luna.

Liza M. Davis (she/her/ella) is Advocacy Director, Children in Immigrant Families, at The Children’s Partnership. Liza leads a number of TCP’s high-priority policy, research and community education initiatives related to children in immigrant families and serves as strategic lead on evaluating TCP’s emerging work in support of immigrant families in California and nationally. Prior to this, Liza served as TCP’s Director of Community Engagement and Advocacy, where she helped advance the organization’s vision of meaningful, community-centered policy change.

Before joining TCP, Liza worked as a public interest attorney for over a decade. She collaborated with and provided direct representation to some of the most marginalized members of our community. Liza dedicated her entire legal career to representing children and families. As an attorney, Liza represented thousands of clients in matters regarding education law, family law, juvenile law, guardianship, public benefits, immigration and other issues vital to improving their quality of life. As a Senior Attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), Liza represented victims of torture, domestic violence, trafficking, and other serious crimes in both family law and immigration matters. Additionally, Liza advocated for the rights of families impacted by domestic violence via local and state policy advocacy, in deep partnership with key community-led coalitions focused on reimagining the way we serve families in crisis. Notably, Liza helped support and continues to play an active role in the Reimagine Child Safety Coalition, which works to reimagine our family regulation system and the way we address child safety. While at LAFLA, Liza also helped develop and execute Legal Aid’s first all-staff policy initiative: Support Over Separation (SOS) aimed at strategically addressing the intersection between legal aid and the child welfare system, with the goal of ensuring that families received the support and resources they need to stay together. Before LAFLA, Liza worked at Public Counsel, where she provided direct legal services, policy and legislative advocacy on issues related to youth in the juvenile justice system, youth in foster care, and young victims of commercial sexual exploitation. While at Public Counsel, Liza managed various community-based legal programs, where she helped system-impacted youth enforce their education/special education rights, and worked to decriminalize children with disabilities in schools, group homes and other foster care placements.

Immediately after graduating from Southwestern Law School, Liza helped establish and direct the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) pro-per clinic at the Immigration Center for Women and Children. She joined Southwestern Law School as an Adjunct Professor of Law in 2018 teaching and mentoring students interested in public interest and public sector law. Liza received a BA in Sociology with minors in Applied Psychology and History from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a proud immigrant from Guatemala raised in Hawthorne, CA. She shares her life with her husband Ryan, their two daughters, and their dog Chase.

Raven Jones-McKinney is Director, Peer-to-Peer Youth Mental Health, at The Children’s Partnership. Raven is responsible for the execution of a 5-year, $10 million pilot program focused on peer-to-peer youth mental health. Raven will support the pilot sites across California to execute up to 3 school years of peer support programs that are responsive to the mental health needs of youth in those communities and connect to the broader ecosystem of resources and assets in order to inform a set of recommendations for a model statewide.

Raven has spent her career working as a conduit for transformation on behalf of and alongside young people. As a youth development expert she has created safe spaces for individual growth, exploration and access to opportunity for Black and brown youth in systemically underserved communities. Throughout her tenure in community based non-profits, she’s been tapped to open new national offices, expanding programming and building partnerships within local districts and charter networks across Southern California and Northern Texas. Before joining TCP, Raven served as a Director for Organizational Strategy and Equity Programs for one of the largest charter networks in Southern California. Managing annual strategic planning, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and a wide range of crisis management special projects. Throughout her career, she has pushed the organizations and communities she’s been part of to work towards adopting actionable anti-racist and pro-Black commitments. She believes wholeheartedly in centering inclusion and equity for both the youth we support and the adults within the organization doing the work. Raven holds a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Studies with a focus in Gender, Race & Class from Pitzer College and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy & Public Administration from Northwestern University.  She proudly identities as a Black queer woman. She and her partner live in Long Beach and share a 6 year old dog named Shadow. She loves interior and floral design, vegan tacos and ice cream!

Nada brings with her a decade of nonprofit experience in grant management, program management and operations. Prior to The Children’s Partnership, she served as the managing director at Karam Foundation, where she dedicated herself to growing the nonprofit to empower Syrian refugee youth and families through community, mentorship and innovative education initiatives. She established the organization’s ability to both receive and award grants by creating a grant management system. Additionally, having worked directly with the communities served, she also learned the value of partnering with them to design and improve programs, addressing their needs at a deeper and more holistic level. Nada’s commitment to service and her passion for social change drove her to develop creative solutions that ensured these programs and systems ran efficiently, while maintaining transparency and compliance standards.

Nada holds a bachelor’s in computer information systems from the University of California, Riverside, and a master’s in health informatics from Boston University. She is a proud Muslim Arab American, resides in Los Angeles, and spends her free time camping out on the trail exploring nature’s beauty.

Sohna Bruce-Oliver (she/her) is Associate Director, Community Engagement, at The Children’s Partnership (TCP), where she engages the community in policy work through relationship-building with direct service providers, community-based organizations and fellow advocacy organizations. Joining TCP in 2020, she brought her experience from a technology company specializing in addressing the social determinants of health, gaining a unique perspective on leveraging technology for positive community impacts. Sohna holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications from California State University, Bakersfield, and a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of San Francisco. As a first-generation college graduate, her lived experience informs her passion for advocating for equitable access to education and resources for all children and families. Originally from Bakersfield, Sohna now resides in Los Angeles, where she enjoys live music, art, and attending cultural events in her free time.

Lily Dorn is Policy Manager, Health Care, supporting the health care team with developing and implementing advocacy strategies that engage policymakers, key stakeholders, and build coalitions around The Children’s Partnership’s core issue areas.

Before joining TCP, Lily was a Legislative Affairs Specialist and Policy Analyst at the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County (CCALAC). For over five years at CCALAC, she led advocacy efforts to advance the policy priorities of its member community health centers,
which provide comprehensive health care services to more than 2 million patients across the county.

Prior to returning to Los Angeles in 2019, Lily worked in Oregon on multiple ballot measure campaigns. As Coalition Manager for the Yes for Affordable Housing Campaign, she led a 170-member coalition that successfully passed a revenue measure to expand affordable housing in the Portland-metro region. Leveraging community-driven policy change, she built strategic partnerships with community groups, elected officials, and business leaders to achieve a shared vision.

A proud daughter of a Salvadoran immigrant and a third generation Angeleno, Lily is deeply committed to the power of people to transform their communities. She holds a bachelor’s degree in public health from Oregon State University.

Jamila Michael (she/her) is Policy Associate, Early Childhood Development, and supports the advocacy team with developing and implementing advocacy strategies, engaging policymakers, key stakeholders and coalitions around TCP’s advocacy issue areas. Jamila joined TCP in 2023. 

Jamila was educated at Wellesley College with a B.A. in History and is currently pursuing her graduate degree at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. Her undergraduate degree specialized in the social movements of marginalized communities throughout the history of the United States, which ultimately fueled her career focuses moving forward. Since then, Jamila has supported first-generation college students in college readiness and scholarship applications through her local AVID program, worked to exonerate the wrongfully convicted and provide them with timely compensation at The California Innocence Project, and initiated vital discussions about BIPOC experiences among the Innocence Network staff, fostering understanding and solidarity among diverse professionals. Her philosophy of inclusivity and empowerment drives her, echoing her belief that prosperity’s table has room for all.

Since joining The Children’s Partnership, Jamila has shown great dedication to our work by working on projects to engage and educate the community and various stakeholders. She has published two TCP briefs related to early childhood development and different supports available to ensure equitable health access and the ability for all children to thrive. Additionally, Jamila has planned and supported several webinars, fostering important education and conversations to move the needle closer to true equity for all. 

Outside TCP, Jamila enjoys competitive video games, hitting the San Diego beaches, challenging gym workouts, and exploring her Afro-Caribbean heritage. Jamila is also an experienced dog walker and companion to all her community’s four-legged friends.

Jazmin is a Policy Associate and supports the advocacy team with developing and implementing advocacy strategies that engage policymakers, key stakeholders, and build coalitions around TCP’s core issue areas. Jazmín began her work with TCP as an undergraduate policy and communications intern. She attended The University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a BA in Health and Societies, concentrating in health policy and law. Jazmín is a proud Boyle Heights native and is passionate about social justice, equity and the intersection of the sciences, policy and the sociology of medicine. She has a particular interest in holistic health care and the role of community in public health.