Tori Russell

Role:

Director, Change Management

Areas of Expertise:

Change and Implementation

Professional Child Welfare Experience: Since 1997
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

As the Director of Change Management, Tori Russell provides leadership and oversight for all Center for States work related to building organizational and system capacity and readiness at child welfare agencies and applying the principles of implementation science and organizational change management to the child welfare sector. Her expertise includes practice and systems change as it relates to all aspects of child welfare and child welfare practices related to prevention and child maltreatment, as well as safety, permanency, and well-being.

Ms. Russell’s work with the Center focuses on leading teams of staff and consultants in content development, training development and delivery, application, and testing of the Change and Implementation in Practice series of resources that provides user-friendly information on research-informed implementation concepts to explain key steps and tasks for moving through a systematic change and implementation process. At the Center, Ms. Russell also manages a team of experts in providing intensive tailored services to build the capacity of the Strengthening Child Welfare Systems to Achieve Expected Outcomes Grantees, a project that supports five Grantees in the development of plans to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate strategies to improve adoption and permanency outcomes.

Before joining the Center, Ms. Russell served as a Senior Associate at the Center for the Support of Families, where she developed and provided training and technical assistance to state child welfare agencies in practicing and developing, implementing, monitoring, and assessing practice and systemic interventions, with the goal of improving outcomes for children and families. Previously, she also served as the Deputy Director of the Child Welfare Reviews Project, the Senior Principal for the CQI Training Academy, and Senior Principal and Project Director for the Permanency Innovations Initiative Training and Technical Assistance Project.

Ms. Russell holds a B.A. from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Policy from American University.

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