Kristen Weber is the Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Justice for the Center for the Study Social Policy. She leads CSSP’s strategic vision for addressing equity internally at CSSP and provides external technical assistance to jurisdictions working to address racial inequities. She leads CSSP’s Institutional Analysis project (IA), a qualitative review process to analyze laws, policies and practices that contribute to poor outcomes for particular populations involved with child welfare systems. Kristen has conducted IAs and written accompanying papers about child welfare system contributors to racial disproportionality and disparities in achieving permanency experienced by African American and Latino children, youth, and families; systems’ responses to battered women and their children; and system contributors to the lack of safety and affirmation experienced by LGBTQ+ youth and families.

Kristen serves as a faculty member for Foster America—a fellowship program whose mission is to improve the lives of America’s more vulnerable children by building a pipeline of leaders and innovators who will help transform child welfare systems. She recently was a part of a technical assistance team on the Quality Improvement Center on Domestic Violence and Child Welfare and also has served on teams monitoring federal consent decrees to improve the child welfare systems in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey. Previously, Kristen was a staff attorney/Skadden Fellow, Legal Services for Children in San Francisco where she provided formal and informal legal interventions to at-risk children and youth.