Welcoming an Old Friend

Executive Director and Co-Founder, Bob Schwartz,

This post is the fourth in a series by Executive Director and Co-Founder, Bob Schwartz. Over the coming months, Bob will reflect on Juvenile Law Center's four decades of advocacy work for children at risk. This year marks Juvenile Law Center's 40th anniversary, and we're looking forward to celebrating our past successes. However, this year is also about anticipating the next wave of threats to vulnerable youth and ensuring that children at risk have ample opportunity for success as adults. Read the first post here.


As we announced several months ago, I will be stepping down as Juvenile Law Center’s Executive Director in the fall. Having been a part of Juvenile Law Center for 40 years, I have naturally wondered about succession.  Who will replace me?  Will my successor appreciate our brilliant staff?  Our Board, which is generous in so many ways?  Our indefatigable colleagues?  Our donors, who are among our most important partners?

In mid-October, Sue Mangold, now a professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School, will become Juvenile Law Center’s next Executive Director.  This is good news: Sue has an exuberant appreciation of Juvenile Law Center and our extended family.

Sue began her career here in 1987 on a Harvard Public Interest Law Fellowship.  While at Juvenile Law Center, she had a caseload of clients in the child abuse and neglect system.  She worked to shape state policy towards children who were HIV-infected.  She co-authored the second edition of the Center’s desk book for Pennsylvania judges who heard child abuse and neglect cases. 

In 1992, Sue left Juvenile Law Center for SUNY Buffalo.  There, Sue held leadership roles while teaching courses on children and the law.  Today she is the co-editor of Children and the Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice, a leading law school casebook in our field. 

I’m not surprised that Sue has been a successful academic.  In the late 1980s she helped me design a course on children and the law that we taught at an area college.  Her intellect, clear thinking, empathy and enthusiasm made her as talented a teacher as she was a lawyer.  She showed the same unbounded energy in teaching that she evinced every day at the office.

Sue’s expertise in child welfare will enrich a staff that has already helped to shape the national agenda on foster youth who “age out” of care.  Interestingly, during Sue’s first stint with Juvenile Law Center, we were better known for our child welfare work than for our efforts to improve the justice system.  Today, led by my co-founder Marsha Levick’s savvy efforts, Juvenile Law Center is among the nation’s leaders shaping justice policy.

Juvenile Law Center’s child welfare niche is with adolescents who are in or aging out of foster care.  Our Board tapped Sue in part because she has the skills to increase our child welfare portfolio.  As the head of our Board Search Committee observed, “Sue is the ideal person to continue Juvenile Law Center’s history of connecting theory to practice.  She has a strong background in child welfare, which will ensure that our work on behalf of foster youth is as effective as our efforts for youth in the justice system.”  

Sue will “officially” start on October 14, the morning after our 40th anniversary dinner in Philadelphia.  I hope that you can join us on October 13 to celebrate our 40 years of advocacy, and to welcome Sue’s return to the family.