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EXPLORING OUR OVERLAPPING BIASES AND HOW THEY AFFECT DECISION-MAKING IN FAMILY COURT
Biographies
Anee Korme serves as a Director in The Raben Group’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practice. She is a passionate diversity advocate and educator with over 11 years of experience working in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space and its intersection with public higher education.
Before joining Raben, Anee served as the Associate Director for Student Diversity and Development at Towson University, where she provided subject matter expertise on issues related to racial bias and organizational dynamics, while delivering training programs for staff, faculty, and students. Additionally, she served as adjunct faculty at the University, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Anee previously worked as an agent for change at Southern Illinois University; University of Maryland College Park; the David C. Driskell Center for African American Art and Culture; the State Superintendent of Education in Washington, DC; and the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships. Throughout her career, she has developed and implemented more than 100 millennial and Generation Z-based diversity workshops, pieces of training, and seminars.
Anee also provided strategic policies, training, and expertise for clients including PepsiCo/Frito-Lay Pacific Northwest Women’s Forum, Johns Hopkins University Office of Student Engagement and the Maryland State Department of Education, Division of Early Childhood, through her private firm.
In 2017, Anee was named one of Prince George’s County’s “40 Under Forty” for her work as a diversity agent and advocate. The proud first-generation Ethiopian American and Maryland native received her Bachelor of Business Administration from Temple University, her Master of Arts in Higher Education Leadership and Policy from the University of Maryland College Park, and her Master of Business Administration from the University of Baltimore.
Anne Oredecko - 2019 COD Network Conference
Anne Oredeko is the supervising attorney of the Racial Justice Unit at The Legal Aid Society in New York City. She has worked to develop the RJU since its inception in 2018. Her work focuses internally on supporting Legal Aid staff in developing a racial justice framework in their legal practice and providing them with tools to address racial injustice in the legal system. Externally, she partners with community members around policy issues and provides legal support to grassroot organizations. Prior to her work in the RJU, she lead the School Justice Project at Youth Represent, and she was a public defender at The Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, NY.
Sabrina-Yvette d’Almeida is the Chief Talent and Equity Officer at Children’s Law Center. In her role, she leads CLC’s Human Resource and Diversity Equity and Inclusion strategies. She is a dynamic leader that partners with others in leadership and across the organization to develop and implement the Human Resources and Talent Management operational systems and structures that support the mission and vision of The Children’s Law Center.
Sabrina-Yvette also is the organization’s executive level diversity and inclusion strategist. She works to partner across the organization to optimize organizational culture, align the organization’s diversity and inclusion goals with organizational outcomes and to respond to changes or policies that occur outside of the organization that affect organizational culture.Education: Howard University, BA; American University, MSOD
Robert L. Matthews is the Acting Director of the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA). In this role, he manages the District's child welfare and family strengthening system. Previously, Director Matthews has served as the Deputy Director of Entry Services of CFSA and most recently, Principal Deputy Director for the agency. A seasoned child welfare leader and manager, Director Matthews brings to the helm more than two decades of experience within child- and family-serving organizations.
As CFSA's Principal Deputy Director, Director Matthews was charged with oversight of all the agency's clinical practice, programmatic operations including Child Protective Services and the Office of Youth Empowerment, and clinical and health services. During his tenure at CFSA, Director Matthews has led improvements in kinship care programming, child abuse and neglect investigations, and community-based prevention services. Additionally, he is credited with implementing the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) practice known as "The Finish Line" that allowed the agency to meet the performance standards required to exit Federal Court oversight via the District's 32-year LaShawn A. v. Bowser class-action lawsuit.
Director Matthews career began in Tennessee within the Department of Children’s Services. Since that time, he has held numerous roles within social services including Assistant Commissioner of Adult and Family Services for the Tennessee Department of Human Services and Chief of Staff for Maryland's Social Services Administration. Much of his experience in national child welfare reform comes from his time spent with the Annie E. Casey Foundation where he provided consultation to jurisdictions within Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Georgia. With a proven track record of success in leadership within child welfare, Director Matthews has presented his initiatives and practices at the Child Welfare League of America Conference, the National Family Foster Treatment Association Conference, and the Black Administrators on Child Welfare Conference.
Director Matthews received his Bachelor of Science in Social Science from Tennessee State University and holds a Master of Science in Public Administration from Cumberland University.
Tayo Belle is a Senior Staff Attorney at School Justice Project. Tayo represents court-involved young people ages 17-22 in their special education matters. In this role, Tayo works to mitigate the consequences of the juvenile and criminal justice systems by using special education laws to promote education over incarceration. Tayo also serves as counsel in Charles H. v. District of Columbia, a class action challenging the denial of education to incarcerated students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tayo also works on SJP’s systemic advocacy efforts aimed at improving correctional education, increasing access to special education attorneys in criminal court, and advocating for effective implementation of Individualized Education Programs (“IEP”). Prior to joining SJP, Tayo was a Staff Attorney at Advocates for Children of New York representing individual students with special education needs. Tayo was also an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York ACLU affiliate, where she advocated for statewide and local policies to address school discipline and safety issues. She represented public school students in suspension hearings and assisted with education-related federal litigation. Tayo is a 2010 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law.
Rita Cameron Wedding, Ph.D. was the Chair of the Women’s Studies Department at Sacramento State University for 23 years. Currently she is Faculty Emeritus in the departments of Women’s and Ethnic Studies at Sacramento State University. Dr. Cameron Wedding’s curriculum Implicit Bias: Impact on Decision-Making, has been used to train judges, public defenders, practitioners in child welfare, juvenile justice, law enforcement and education in jurisdictions throughout the country since 2005.
As a faculty for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), she has trained judges at court improvement initiatives in over 45 states. In 2010 Dr. Cameron Wedding was featured in the Office of Juvenile Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) website which showcased her work for “content, expertise and platform excellence.”
She was also a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, one of the largest child advocacy foundations in the U.S. In 2013 in response to the U.S. Department of Justice’s 3-year investigation and findings of civil rights violations, Dr. Cameron Wedding led a training team of 5 experts to provide implicit bias training to the entire Shelby County Juvenile Court in Memphis TN. In California 2009-11, she directed an implicit bias training program designed mitigate the effects of the School to Prison Pipeline by identifying practices that contribute to negative school outcomes that place students at increased risk of juvenile justice involvement. Dr. Cameron Wedding has conducted implicit bias Train the Trainer Institutes, webinars, keynotes, podcasts and developed curriculum for numerous agencies and states throughout the country including the Texas New Judges College, the National Association of Children’s Counsel, the Family Court of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Child Abuse and Neglect Institutes in Reno, Louisville, and Atlanta, the New York State Judicial Institute, Superior Court Judges in Hawaii and Illinois and the Michigan Judges Association. In addition, Dr. Cameron Wedding provided expert testimony before the U.S. Commission on Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities during President Obama’s administration (2015). She developed an implicit bias police de-escalation curriculum for Fight Crime Invest In Kids to train 5000 in-service and academy officers in the U.S. and wrote one of the first declarations which challenged racial bias in a criminal legal process under California’s new Racial Justice Act (2021).
Since 2019, Dr. Cameron Wedding developed security officer train-the trainer curriculum for a multi-national company and trained participants from over ten countries in 2021. As a Fulbright Scholar Dr. Cameron Wedding conducted research in Tanzania and South Africa. She has presented on national talk radio in Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa, taught at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica and the United Nations University International Leadership Institute Conference on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in Amman Jordan. In 2014 she delivered a talk at an international conference in Athens Greece, in 2016 she participated on a faculty panel at the City University of Hong Kong. In 2019 at the invitation of the government, she attended the 25th anniversary of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Kigali Rwanda. She serves on the governing board of Global Majority, an organization dedicated to peace and conflict resolution throughout the world.
In 2012 Dr. Cameron Wedding was the recipient of the John C. Livingston Distinguished Faculty Lecture Award, the highest faculty honor awarded by Sacramento State University.