Let's Be Real.

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021

Faculty

David Kelly

David P. Kelly, JD, MA, serves as Special Assistant to the Associate Commissioner of the U.S. Children’s Bureau. For over a decade he oversaw CB’s work with state and tribal courts and the legal community. Prior to joining the federal government, David was an Assistant Staff Director at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and a Senior Assistant Child Advocate at the New Jersey Office of the Child Advocate. He began his career as a staff attorney at the Youth Advocacy Center of Covenant House New Jersey where he represented homeless, runaway and at-risk youth on a variety of legal matters and led the organization’s policy initiatives, he later became the Center’s Director of Legal and Clinical services.

Aaron Polkey

Aaron focuses on Learning & Leadership and Workplace & Economic Justice initiatives at Futures Without Violence. He has developed curricula and trained individuals from varied disciplines, including public and private employers and workers, judges, advocates, and professional athletes. Prior to joining FUTURES, Aaron served as an Attorney Advisor with the D.C. Office of the Tenant Advocate, where he fought for affordable and safe housing. Aaron also advocated for equal voting rights with a national nonprofit, and practiced trial law with a prominent firm that specializes in civil rights matters. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Bryan Samuels

Bryan Samuels is the Executive Director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. At Chapin Hall, Samuels’ expertise is aimed at the active integration of empirical evidence into public policy decision making, management of government agencies, design and delivery of programs, and frontline practice. Since taking the helm of Chapin Hall, Samuels has focused on matching Chapin Hall’s historical reputation for rigorous research with unparalleled in-house policy expertise to further the organization’s impact.

Prior to joining Chapin Hall in 2013, Samuels was the commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Samuels administered federal programs addressing child abuse and neglect, runaway and homeless youth, domestic and intimate partner violence, and teen pregnancy. Samuels has also served as chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools and as director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the nation’s third-largest child welfare agency.

Samuels holds a Masters of Public Policy from the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago and a BA from the University of Notre Dame. He has lectured at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, and testified before Congress about the well-being of children in foster care. He frequently presents and writes about the impact of trauma on child well-being and the use of evidence-based interventions to ensure all young people reach their full potential.

Vickie Smith

Vickie Smith is the Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV), a partner on the Illinois QIC-DVCW project. She began her work in the battered women’s movement in 1982, providing emergency safe housing to survivors of domestic violence. She helped open a non-residential crisis intervention program, first serving on the Board of Directors and then serving as the first non-paid director. Vickie joined the staff of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence for the first time in 1988 first as Grant Monitor, and then as Executive Director in 1993.

Vickie is a founding Board member of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, a national advocacy agency located in Washington D.C. During the development of the National Network, she worked with other state and national advocates on drafting the historic 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which has had a significant impact on services for people who experience domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. In 1999 she moved to Texas where she joined the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence and provided technical assistance and training all over the United States. Vickie resumed the position of Executive Director of ICADV in 2008. Her wide-ranging experience has allowed her to build a variety of collaborative projects and programs over the decades to work toward ending violence in homes and communities.

Linda Spears

Linda Spears was appointed Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) by Governor Charlie Baker in 2015 to lead an unprecedented departmental reform. A veteran social worker and policy expert, Commissioner Spears heads an agency of more than 4,200 staff that serve approximately 45,000 children in the Commonwealth with a budget of more than $1 billion. During her tenure, the Department has revised and implemented several key child protection policies, added more than 600 social workers and staff, and created a medical unit that includes a full-time medical director, 6 nurses and medical social workers in every DCF office. Now in its fifth year, the reform is focused on strengthening foster care and permanency work.

Prior to DCF, Commissioner Spears served as Vice President of Policy, Programs and Public Affairs at the Child Welfare League of America for 22 years. She began her career in child welfare as a caseworker for the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families and followed by nearly a decade at what was then called the Massachusetts Department of Social Services.

Commissioner Spears attended the University of Rhode Island and holds B.A. in psychology. She received her M.S.W. from the University of Southern California.

Honorable David Spurgeon

Judge David Spurgeon is recognized as an expert in the area of domestic violence (DV) and serves as the local resource Judge in the Allegheny County QIC-DVCW project. He began his career in the public sector in the District Attorney (DA)’s Office prosecuting misdemeanors, felonies and homicides, and later became the first prosecutor in the DV trial unit to appear in the Family Division to prosecute violations of Protection From Abuse Orders and all types of intimate partner violence cases. Judge Spurgeon helped to create the first specialty court of accountability for repeat batterers in Pennsylvania. He has served as co-chair of the Allegheny County DV Task Force, and facilitated the Intimate Partner Violence Homicide Review Team that examined system breakdowns in this crime type.

Judge Spurgeon has served as adjunct law professor at his alma mater, Duquesne University School of Law and has received numerous awards for public service and in the area of DV prevention. In 2016, Judge Spurgeon was sworn in as a judicial officer in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, Family Division Court, where he hears delinquency, dependency and PFA cases. In 2019, he was named a Fellow by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges for his judicial leadership on DV issues. Judge Spurgeon has also appeared as a legal expert on COURT TV discussing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the area of intimate partner violence.

Karen Tronsgard-Scott

Karen Tronsgard-Scott is the Executive Director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence where she is working toward a world in which all people thrive. Having worked in the field to end gender-based violence since 1995, she is currently focused on building solidarity with others who live to end gender-based violence across social spectrums. In 2020 Ms. Tronsgard-Scott joined the Masters in Restorative Justice Program at the Vermont Law School where she teaches a course focused on domestic and sexual violence responses. She has been privileged to have worked with organizations and coalitions in the movement to end gender-based violence throughout the United States and Europe. Ms. Tronsgard-Scott is Movement Maker and alumna of Move to End Violence, a project designed to create new approaches to addressing gender-based violence. Her work allows her to deeply explore the synergies that arise when people join together in community, when organizations adopt transformative practices, and when organizations and people actively engage in power sharing and trauma healing. In the 1980’s Ms. Tronsgard-Scott worked at the Chitra Lane School for children with developmental disabilities in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where she was first exposed to authentic leadership and transformation. She holds a BA from Bowling Green State University in Environmental Policy and Analysis and a Master’s Degree in Political Science with a certificate in Public Administration from Ohio University.

Isa Woldeguiorguis

For the past 7 years, Isa Woldeguiorguis has been the Executive Director of The Center for Hope and Healing, Inc., in Lowell, Massachusetts (MA). She serves as a trainer, practice coach, and member of the National Advisory Committee for the QIC-DVCW. Ms. Woldeguiorguis has held several state and national roles in the movement to end sexual and domestic violence, including Policy Director at the MA Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence (Jane Doe Inc.), Assistant Commissioner for Practice and Policy in the MA Department of Children and Families, and Director of the Domestic Violence Unit in the same state agency. She has served as faculty on national initiatives, taught at Simmons College School of Social Work, was a Move to End Violence Fellow, and is currently a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Non- Profit Practice. She has authored several articles on topics such as family-centered practice in child welfare, racial and ethnic disproportionality and immigration.

Ms. Woldeguiorguis is a co-chair and founder of the MA Women of Color Network whose vision is a movement in which women of color are in leadership roles in the domestic and sexual violence field, and a Board member of the national Women of Color Inc. network.

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