Kimberly D. Crane is a Project Director with the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative through the Child and Family Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies. She has extensive experience in many arenas of macro practice, particularly in the areas of development, volunteer coordination, collaboration and advocacy. Ms. Crane has had grants funded in the areas of child abuse prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, juvenile justice and foster care, and was Development Coordinator for the American Lung Association of Tennessee. She has served as an evaluation consultant in the fields of HIV/AIDS prevention and foster care. Ms. Crane has worked with local… school systems in Tennessee advocating for special education youth with severe mental health problems. While working as the Community Outreach Coordinator for the South Central Tennessee Family Center, she was responsible for public relations, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and training, strategic planning, program evaluation and coalition building. Ms. Crane received her MSSW with a concentration in Management and Community Practice from the University of Tennessee, where she was the recipient of the 2002 Provost's Citation for Extraordinary Professional Promise and Academic Performance. She presented at the 2002 Council on Social Work Education Annual Program meeting on collaborations between the fields of law and social work. Ms. Crane has volunteered her time on the University of Tennessee College of Social Work Curriculum committee, and with various civic and service organizations. She currently serves on the Independent Living oversight committee for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services and is a co-founder of Impact Consulting Group, a for-profit organization that provides management consulting, grant writing and program evaluation services to human services agencies.
Misty Gould is currently a project coordinator at the Child and Family Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute of Public Policy Studies. Ms. Gould obtained her Masters degree in Social Work from the University of Tennessee in 2002 with a concentration in management and community practice. She currently works to improve services to youth who are aging out of the foster care system through program development and coalition building activities. She currently serves on the Tennessee Independent Living Oversight Committee that focuses on independent living services for youth in the custody of the state. During her graduate experience, she worked with law students from the Vanderbilt University… Legal Clinic in advocating for the rights of youth in state custody. The project introduced the concept of collaboration between law and social work students. Her past experience includes medical social work and advocacy work for the elderly in hospital and nursing home settings. Ms. Gould presented "Social Work and Law in the Practicuum: With Intervention and Justice for All" at the Council for Social Work Education Annual Program Meeting in 2002.
Suzanne L. Shatila is Research Coordinator for the study of racial disparities among children in custody being conducted by the Tennessee Department of Children's Services. She received her M.S.S.W. from the University of Tennessee. She has worked in both macro and micro settings as a case manager, grant writer, evaluation consultant, and researcher in Nashville, TN, Chicago, IL, and Cleveland, OH. Her expertise includes such diverse areas as attorney/social work partnerships, cultural diversity, and substance abuse policy. She is also an active advocate for and liaison with the Arab-American Community in Nashville. Her recent special projects have included a leadership role in an audit of… the Nashville area school system directed at assuring equitable distribution of resources between schools and membership in the evaluation team for a community-empowerment project. She has made numerous presentations and in a variety of settings on topics related to these areas. Her most recent presentation was coauthored by Ms. Crane and Ms. Gould, "Social Work and Law in the Practicuum: With Intervention and Justice for All" at the Council for Social Work Education Annual Program Meeting in 2002.