Olivia Golden Email and Phone Number

Excited to support the Foundation for Child Development in their development of a strategy and program of activities to advance social justice for young children, with a core commitment to children marginalized by racism, xenophobia, and economic inequality.

Lead premier national anti-poverty nonprofit, founded in 1969, working with an extraordinary team to reshape vision and approach to fully embrace new strategies, audiences, and a central focus on racial equity. With colleagues, create major new partnerships with powerful impact, including the Protecting Immigrant Families campaign with 500+ members (co-created and co-led with the National Immigration Law Center) and the innovative Young Adult Engagement Strategy, emerging from leading work by CLASP’s youth policy team on young men and young women of color. Strengthened CLASP’s national and state policy leadership in diverse areas including child care; paid leave and related labor standards enforcement; policies affecting youth and young adults; immigration and immigrant families; emerging work in mental health and criminal justice policy; and access to post-secondary education for students with low incomes, and students of color. Grew the organization from about 30 to 50 staff to meet the urgent need for our work, while revamping hiring processes, dramatically increasing diversity of staff and board (currently, about 2/3 of staff at all levels including leadership identify as people of color), and building core administrative, communications, and legislative capacity to support the growth. Expanded and diversified CLASP’s funding base, increasing total budget from about $6 million to $9 million annually, leading a highly successful 50th Anniversary celebration that exceeded revenue targets, and creating for the first time an individual donor base in addition to strong foundation relationships.

Leader and innovator within the Institute and externally. Conducted research and wrote and spoke extensively on child and family policy, anti-poverty policy, and public sector leadership, including conceiving and leading a multi-state, $25 million demonstration to improve low-income families’ access to Medicaid, SNAP, and child care assistance. While I was largely at Urban to write a book (Reforming Child Welfare), I took on management roles as needed, including Interim Center Director (April 2010 – March 2011) and director of the Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism project, created to study the 1996 welfare reform (2004-7).

Served as the Governor’s Director of State Operations from February to December 2007, reporting to the Chief Secretary and directly overseeing operations of all 60+ agencies of state government. Major accomplishments included delivering on the Governor’s key first-year commitments (such as dramatically increasing the number of children enrolled in preschool, expanding child health insurance, providing rebates to low-income property taxpayers, and putting in place regional economic development strategies); creating performance accountability in the agencies; and serving as the founding chair of the Children’s Cabinet and Economic Security Cabinet.

Appointed by Mayor Anthony Williams to transform an agency with a history of failure and bring it back from federal court receivership. Under national scrutiny, successfully met the federal court’s rigorous performance standards, recruited a strong leadership team, brought social worker caseloads down to record lows, created an effective management information system and a culture of performance improvement, and measurably improved results for children and the quality of services.

Appointed by President Clinton as the top-ranking official in the Administration for Children and Families. Shaped an emerging working families agenda, including the tripling of child care funds; led the agency’s successful work on four High Impact goals set in conjunction with the Vice President’s office (including doubling adoptions from foster care, dramatically improving child support collections, and sharply increasing entries into employment from welfare); issued major regulatory packages including the regulations implementing the welfare reform legislation; built a strong regional structure; and strengthened morale, effectiveness, and relationships with key stakeholders. Responsible for a budget of $38 billion, 1500 staff, and over 60 Federal programs including welfare reform, child support enforcement, Head Start, child care, child welfare, and programs for Native Americans, refugees, and the developmentally disabled.

Appointed by President Clinton to oversee a $9 billion budget focused on children’s programs and about 200 staff. Led the design and implementation of Early Head Start, which extends the benefits of Head Start’s top quality early childhood development approach to infants and toddlers and has now served as a model for high quality infant-toddler services for more than twenty-five years. Played a key role in the 1994 Head Start reauthorization and in implementing its focus on quality and expansion; oversaw child welfare improvements including the development and implementation of an outcomes-driven and family-focused monitoring strategy.