Staff

Dr. Amy Dworsky is the Co-Principal Investigator of Activate. She oversees Chapin Hall’s contributions and provides oversight and guidance for Activate’s activities and planning. She is a nationally recognized expert on youth transitioning out of foster care and youth experiencing homelessness. Dr. Dworsky has studied and written about the sexual and reproductive health of youth in foster care, sexual and reproductive health training for child welfare workers and foster parents, youth in foster care who are pregnant or parenting, and pregnant or parenting youth experiencing homelessness. She is leading an evaluation of a sexual health education program for young people in congregate care and their caregivers.

Dr. Mindy Scott is the Principal Investigator of Activate. She provides oversight and guidance for all of Activates activities and planning. She has over 15 years of experience conducting research on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and translating the results of that research into accessible and relevant recommendations and strategies for program developers; program facilitators; and local, state, and federal funding agencies. Her research interests focus on adolescent and young adult relationship dynamics, adolescent parenting and coparenting, and young fathers. Dr. Scott works closely with program providers to provide research-based implementation and evaluation-focused training and technical assistance to help youth-serving programs meet their goals and improve outcomes for young people.

Jan DeCoursey, A.M. is the Project Director of Activate. She oversees Activate’s planning, project activities, quality assurance, staff, and operations. She has over 20 years of experience conducting applied research and evaluation focused on the implementation, effectiveness, and improvement of policies and programs in child welfare and youth transition to adulthood. Her research in child welfare includes research focused on expectant and parenting young people who are involved in the child welfare system and opportunity youth. In addition to her research experience, Jan spent several years developing and implementing youth programs as the Director of Youth Programs for the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and was Program Director at the I Have a Dream Foundation. She began her career as a Family Educator in a diagnostic, residential foster home.

Shaniah Smith is a project manager of Activate. Prior to working at Child Trends, Shaniah served as an office and education program coordinator for Everyday Miracles where she helped families with low-incomes and families of color request doula services as well as other pregnancy related services. She is also a birth doula herself, having taken the Community Outreach Perinatal Educator (COPE) training, and she is passionate about working with families to cultivate the best birth experience for them. Additionally, Shaniah has multiple years of experience working as an early childhood education teacher to infants and toddlers. As a woman of color, she is passionate about reproductive justice and working with families with low incomes and families of color. Shaniah graduated from Hamline University with a Bachelor of Arts in social justice and sociology with a concentration in reproductive justice.

Dr. Sam Beckwith is an adolescent health researcher with more than a decade of experience developing, conducting, and communicating about research on youth well-being. His primary research interests are adolescent opportunity, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and positive youth development, as well as the ways these topics build on one another. The end goal of his research is to build a better understanding of the ways programs and policies can serve and empower young people, improve outcomes starting at a critical juncture in their lives, and reduce inequities. Within Activate, his work has ranged from developing resources for youth-serving professionals on sex-based harassment in the workplace, to reporting on the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of opportunity youth.

Dr. Amanda Griffin is dedicated to addressing social inequities faced by youth who experienced maltreatment, homelessness, or involvement in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. She has collaborated with community stakeholders to elevate young people’s voices, ensuring their experiences inform the development and evaluation of resources and programs designed to support them. As a member of the Activate Team, she has focused on disseminating rigorously evaluated research on birth control methods, sexual cyberbullying, sexually transmitted infections, condom use, and sex trafficking into actionable insights for youth supporting professionals.

Dr. Jennifer Manlove is a sociologist and nationally recognized researcher on adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health, conducting research on sexual activity, contraceptive use, unintended pregnancy, and fertility. Dr. Manlove is a senior advisor to Activate. Her research focuses on ensuring adolescents have equitable access to education and services to meet their sexual and reproductive health needs. Dr. Manlove has experience leading multi-component research and evaluation projects. She has served as the Principal Investigator and/or lead evaluator on multiple randomized controlled trial evaluations of adolescent sexual health programs working with a variety of populations and settings.

Gabriella Guerra is the Dissemination Task Lead on Activate and contributes to research translation and resource development. She is passionate about population health and prevention sciences, with a particular interest in supporting positive health outcomes for minoritized youth throughout the life course. Her work often places her at the intersection of data and communication, and she pulls from human-centered design principles to guide effective research translation during product development. She is responsible for developing Activate’s network growth strategy, developing and monitoring metrics to track digital impact, and overseeing day-to-day communications activities. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 2019.

Dr. Asari Offiong is the Needs Assessment Lead for Activate and contributes to research translation and resource development. As an adolescent health researcher and public health practitioner, she has more than a decade of experience leading youth development programs and conducting mixed methods, community-based research in various metropolitan areas across the United States with non-profits, school districts, libraries, and government agencies. Furthermore, she has experience designing, implementing, managing, and evaluating culturally relevant programs related to substance use prevention and reproductive health for youth in inner-city settings. Her research projects have focused on reengaging opportunity youth, preventing early substance use and promoting positive sexual and reproductive health among the most vulnerable, including expecting and parenting adolescents. Also, she has a wealth of experience providing technical assistance to state and community-level youth-serving professionals around sexual health and youth development.

Ana Maria Pavic is a member of the Dissemination Task Team for Activate. She is particularly interested in disseminating rigorously evaluated research on women’s reproductive health and holistic health education. She works to expand Activate’s reach through multi-pronged, targeted efforts. Ana Maria manages a variety of communications activities, including communications planning, content development, editing, website management, and social media strategy and implementation.

Katelyn Rust is a Community Liaison at Child Trends. They joined the Activate project in December 2022 and will be contributing to the literature review brief about sex-based harassment and gender-affirming and trauma-informed care. They work primarily in research and technical assistance, supporting youth and community engagement, data collection, and reporting and dissemination activities. Their research interests include advancing equity and improving outcomes for Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+, and chronically ill and disabled children and youth.

Dane Rivas-Koehl is a Research Translation Consultant with the Activate team, where he helps translate empirical information into tangible resources that support youth-serving professionals in enhancing the health and well-being of youth in Activate’s target population. With a background in Human Development and Family Science, Dane’s research focuses on promoting the overall health and well-being of youth across varying life experiences. He employs various theoretical frameworks to highlight the experiences of youth in both academic and policy contexts to help reduce adverse health outcomes and promote thriving. His expertise in research translation, qualitative and quantitative methods, and community-based approaches informs his work at Child Trends, where he ensures that research findings are both actionable and accessible to those dedicated to improving the well-being of youth in Activate’s target populations.

Dr. Rachel Rosenberg is the Research Alliance Task Lead on Activate and contributes to research translation and resource development. She has over a decade of experience in child welfare, youth development, and the transition to adulthood for system-involved youth.   She has expertise in quantitative methods, qualitative methods, program evaluation, and research translation. Most of her work uses a community-engaged research lens by centering the voices of those most impacted in the research throughout the research and research translation process.

Julia Tallant leads the development of the Resource Explorer and contributes to Activate’s research translation and resource development. They are particularly interested in the sexual health of queer and trans young people. At Child Trends, Julia works on projects relating to sexual health promotion, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and access to reproductive health resources.

Karlee Naylon contributes to Activate’s research translation and resource development and is a Sr. Research Analyst at Child Trends, where her work is focused on programs that support transition-age youth in foster care. She is especially interested in research on systems change and family-level supports that can prevent contact with the child welfare system, specifically civil legal aid. She has experience both creating and disseminating technical assistance resources on a variety of topics for many audiences including state and local agencies, nonprofits, and advocates.

Kate Welti is an Advisor on the Activate team. She brings over a decade of experience working on research and program evaluation projects related to sexual and reproductive health. Her work focuses on improving effective sexual health programming for youth and increasing equitable access to high-quality family planning care. Kate translates research and evaluation findings into actionable recommendations that are disseminated to policymakers and practitioners in the field of sexual and reproductive health. Her work on Activate has included designing the Sexual and Reproductive Health Resource Explorer and analyzing national data to understand and disseminate information on, the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of opportunity youth.

Matthew Rivas-Koehl is a Research Scientist on the Activate team. He is an expert in interpersonal relationships and sexuality-related topics. His research spans the breadth of Activate’s work, including supporting violence prevention, health promotion, and efforts to improve interpersonal relationships across the lifespan. He is dedicated to advancing the wellbeing of youth through research, effective translation and dissemination, and community-based approaches. Matthew holds a Master of Science in human development and family sciences from Texas Tech University and will be awarded his PhD in human development and family studies in May 2025 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Colleen Schlecht is dedicated to generating rigorous evidence and helping agencies and providers apply evidence to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. She has worked on system improvement and capacity-building efforts targeting solutions for child welfare systems, pregnant and parenting teens, opportunity youth, and youth transitioning to adulthood. Schlecht is principal investigator on a project supporting runaway and homeless youth organizations to strengthen their capacities to improve youth outcomes. As a member of Activate, she has focused on research reviews and disseminating rigorously evaluated research on birth control methods, sexual cyberbullying, sex trafficking, intimate partner violence, sex-based harassment, and sexually transmitted infections to service providers.

Lee Ann Huang is a senior researcher at Chapin Hall and a member of Activate’s Research Translation Team. Lee Ann is committed to producing, translating, and disseminating research that leads to improved well-being for children, youth, and families. Her work focuses on myriad programs and policies that aim to support children and families, including the prevention of child maltreatment, home visiting, early childhood education, sexual and reproductive health for young people, and programs for pregnant and parenting homeless youth. As a member of Activate, she has contributed to disseminating research on access to sexual and reproductive health care for youth and the experiences of expectant and parenting youth.