Speakers | Ohio Children's Alliance Symposium

Keynotes - Voices of Impact

The Power of Three: Building Enduring Partnerships with Clients, Funders, and Staff

Overview: The future of child- and family-serving agencies depends on their ability to build and sustain three essential partnerships: with clients, with funders, and—most critically—with staff. Drawing on national research and hundreds of interviews with direct care professionals, this session will explore how aligning an agency’s mission, strategy, and culture can foster authentic staff engagement and retention.

Participants will examine the key drivers of job satisfaction—including onboarding, supervision, team-building, and appreciation—and learn how to minimize common dissatisfiers such as burnout, unrealistic expectations, and lack of communication. This session offers a practical roadmap for leaders committed to creating a workplace where staff feel valued, supported, and inspired to stay.

Tom Woll
Founder

Strategic Change Initiative

Closing Keynote Presentation
Lisette Burton, J.D.
Chief Policy & Practice Advisor, Association of Children's Residential & Community Services (ACRC)

Lisette joined ACRC in 2020 after serving on the board of directors as the Public Policy Committee Chair for several years. In addition to leading ACRC’s advocacy efforts, Lisette builds coalitions and strategic partnerships and she utilizes her experience and skills to provide expert-level guidance, policy analysis, practice support, facilitation, strategic planning, and consultation services to ACRC’s membership and non-member systems, agencies, and associations.

Previously, Lisette was the Vice President of National Advocacy and Public Policy for the national nonprofit Boys Town, where she advocated for effective federal and state policies related to child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and health. Lisette’s foundational experiences are in direct care, and she joined Boys Town in 2007 as a Family Teacher caring for girls in foster care and boys committed to the juvenile justice system in a family-style, community-based, therapeutic residential program.

Prior to Boys Town, Lisette worked in North Carolina as a program director at a therapeutic residential wilderness program and later as a community organizer focused on quality early childhood education and parental involvement in schools.

Lisette serves on several national policy committees, coalitions, and working groups. She is a mayoral appointee to the Washington, DC Juvenile Justice Advisory Group and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma.

Lisette regularly facilitates conversations and shares policy and practice insight and expertise with local, state, national, and international audiences.Lisette received her B.S. in Science from the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University. She earned her J.D. at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, where she was a Leadership Scholar and Schweitzer Fellow, a pro bono law clerk representing children with special needs, a student attorney at the National Association of the Deaf, and a legislative intern with the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.