
Dana Carroll
Dana Carroll serves as Springfield’s Child Advocate for the Every Child Promise. Dana has been with the Community Partnership of the Ozarks for nearly 15 years. She has experience with child care, early childhood education, and parent education particularly teen parents, at-risk parents, and families who are homeless. Dana is married and has five children. She and her husband have experience with children with special needs, children with challenging behaviors and fostering and adoption of children.

Vickie Dudley
Vickie Dudley serves as the Executive Director for Children’s Center of Southwest Missouri, Children’s Center, a not-for-profit child advocacy center serving twelve rural southwest Missouri counties with four locations, provides a child-focused setting for the assessment and treatment of child abuse. Previously, she held leadership positions at Cox Health and Mercy in Springfield for nearly 30 years. Notably, was her role as Director of Mission Services at Mercy where she led numerous community out reach and advocacy efforts. Dudley has a B.S in Health Promotion from Missouri State University and a Masters in Health Care Mission from Aquinas Institute of Theology.

Halley French
Halley French serves as the executive director of Systems of Care Initiative (SOCI) in Kansas City, an organization aiming to increase access to high-quality early education opportunities for working families with young children. She has more than a decade of experience in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, previously leading the early childhood investment strategy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Halley also previously worked for a nonprofit college access program and taught middle school and high school in Kansas City’s largest urban school district. She is the mother of three young children and is active in her community as the board president of the Berkley Family Involvement Program and as a Girl Scouts troop leader. Halley holds a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Ellie Glenn Harmon

Tracy Greever-Rice
Tracy Greever-Rice is the Co-Director of Research at the MU Center for Health Policy and serves as the Missouri KIDS COUNT Program Director for the Family and Community Trust (FACT). Prior to her current position, Tracy served as the Director at the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis at the University of Missouri- Columbia.

Amy Hill
Amy Hill serves as the Vice President of School-Based Services at Burrell Behavioral Health.

Ken Hussey
Ken Hussey serves as the Director of Leadership and Civic Engagement for the Missouri State Alliance of YMCAs. In this role, he provides leadership to the YMCA Youth and Government programs in Missouri and Kansas, while also assisting with national YMCA youth leadership programs. With the Alliance, he works with Missouri YMCAs to advance their policy priorities at the local, state, and federal levels. Prior to his current role, Ken served as the Executive Director of the Missouri Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a statewide association comprised of over 1,100 pediatricians and residents in Missouri. He served as the lobbyist for the chapter, advocating for children’s health issues at the State Capitol. Since 2013, Ken has served as a councilman on the Jefferson City Council. He currently chairs the Public Works and Planning Council Committee. He is active in the community, and involved with organizations such as Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, and Serve Jeff City.

Wendell Kimbrough
Wendell E. Kimbrough serves as Chief Executive Officer of St. Louis-based Area Resources for Community and Human Services (ARCHS). Wendell is the architect of ARCHS’ intermediary funding model that annually improves the lives of more than 150,000 children and their family members. ARCHS currently funds and enhances a portfolio of 30 St. Louis area education and social service programs provided at 380 locations.Through his leadership, ARCHS has achieved numerous national and regional awards including four “What’s Right With the Region” honors by FOCUS St. Louis. Wendell is noted for 40 years of for-profit and not-for-profit organizational experience including executive posts at Coca-Cola and Tropicana Products. He has served on the boards of the After School for All Partnership for St. Louis, Missouri KIDS Count, St. Louis Mayor’s Task Force on Youth and Families, and the State of Missouri Governor’s Pre-K Readiness Panel. A native of East St. Louis, IL, Wendell has an MBA from the Walter E Heller School of Business at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois and a BA in Business Administration from Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Melia Neal
Melia Neal is the Director of Children, Youth, & Family Services at Community Partnership of Southeast Missouri. She is a driven, innovative leader that provides supervision and programming oversight for multiple programs. Programming includes THRIVE Youth Development, Community Mentoring with Division of Youth Services, Future Leaders, Cape Afterschool Program, Missouri Mentoring Partnership, Golden Angels, CommUnity RX, SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery, and Everyday Dad. Prior to her current position, Melia served as a Children’s Service Worker for the State of Missouri and as Director for Head Start. Melia is also the author of the children’s book Jory The Terror, which focuses on a child dealing with an adverse approach.

Anissa Parra-Grooms

Amanda Schneider

Sanaria Sulaiman
Sanaria is the Executive Director of Vision for Children at Risk. She joined the organization in 2013 as director of Project LAUNCH, a federally funded program to improve young child wellness in the 63106 and 63107 ZIP codes of north St. Louis. Previously, she served for over five years with Child Care Aware of Missouri, most recently as director of training and inclusion services. She has been in the early childhood field for 15 years, and has 10 years of statewide and regional management experience in the area of social and emotional well‐being of children, families and communities, training and educating service providers, with focus on inclusive practices. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and is working toward a master’s in business from Webster University.

Devon Teran
Devon has varied experience working in schools as an administrator, instructional coach and classroom teacher. He works to develop community partnerships to offer meaningful and authentic learning opportunities for students. Devon is a former UnidosUS National Institute for Latino School Leaders fellow, focusing on using federal policy to improve teacher development and retention. He is a former National Principal Fellow for Relay Graduate School of Education. Devon is also an active musician in Kansas City.