Keynote Speakers

Dr. Kathy Briar Lawson
Dean of School of Social Welfare, State University of New York at Albany

Dr. Kathy Briar Lawson Is an experienced academic administrator and national expert on family focused practice and child and family policy. Among her books (co-authored) are Family-Centered Policies & Practices: International Implications (2001) and (co-edited) Innovative Practices with Vulnerable Children and Families (2001). She has recently co-edited two volumes on Evaluation Research in Child Welfare, (2002) and Charting the Impacts of University-Child Welfare Collaboration, (2003). She is a member of the Council on Social Work Education Practice Commission; she also serves as associate editor for the New Global Development: Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare, and is consulting editor for Social Work, as well as Family Preservation. She Co-Chairs the Gerontological Task Force for the National Association for Deans and Directors.

Deborah K. Green
MSW, MAC, CDVC-III, CCJS, BEI-1

Ms. Green is a Services Program Administrator for DFPS Child Protective Services (CPS) in Houston, Texas. She has over 30 years of experience in the field of Child Welfare. Throughout her career, Ms. Green has worked in every area of Child Welfare. Ms. Green lectures and presents on prevention, intervention with families, permanency; and transitional youth services for adolescents that have been "most difficult to serve" as they transition out of the Child Welfare System into adulthood. Additionally, Ms. Green has published several journal articles. Recently, she co-edited Challenging Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare: Research, Policy, and Practice (2011).

Twila Ross
Manager, Permanency Team, Children's Crisis Center, Houston

Permanency Team Manager for the Children's Crisis Care Center. She has served in the field of children's social services for over 40 years. Her beginnings as a CPS worker generated in her a passion for the children and family that are served by that system. Following her work with CPS she served as a juvenile detention center supervisor, the director of children's home, the director of a program working with homeless pregnant women and the director of a program offering social services and transitional living to women exiting prison.