Exciting News from YAF
A Message From Our Director -
It is my pleasure to announce some restructuring of the Youth Advocacy Foundation (YAF). As many of you know, YAF's longtime President & CEO, Josh Dohan, retired this past fall. We took this opportunity to think about the best structure for the organization going forward. Starting immediately, I as Deputy Chief Counsel of the Youth Advocacy Division will serve as the Chairperson of YAF’s Board of Directors. Marlies Spanjaard, Director of Education Advocacy for the Youth Advocacy Division, has been elevated to the YAF Board of Directors and now serves as its President & CEO. Michele Scavongelli, who has served as YAF’s Deputy Director has stepped into the role of Executive Director.
These new roles better reflect the responsibilities that Marlies and Michele have been shouldering for some time now. These changes were only possible because Marlies and Michele have done extraordinary work building the Foundation into a remarkably vibrant institution that has never been healthier financially, with greater public awareness, and which is enabling YAF’s primary initiative, the EdLaw Project to accomplish miracles in education advocacy.
On behalf of the entire YAF Board, as well as Anthony Benedetti, Chief Counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), we could not be prouder of what Marlies, Michele and the entire EdLaw team have already accomplished, and we are confident that the best is yet to come in our mission to shut down the school-to-prison pipeline forever.
Great change takes time. We are in it for the long haul and that is only possible because of the support of CPCS, hundreds of dedicated lawyers and social workers, thousands of individual donors, and a plethora of thoughtful foundations, corporations, law firms and community-based organizations. I am confident that the leadership provided by Marlies and Michele is exactly what we need to see this through. Please join me in congratulating them on their new roles.
- Duci Goncalves, Esq., YAF Chairman of the Board
