“The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy.”
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Jen Agosti is the founder and president of JRA Consulting, Ltd. Jen provides consulting services focused on the transformation of organizational cultures in child and family service organizations. She served as the Project Director at Casey Family Programs for the first two Breakthrough Series Collaboratives (BSC) conducted in child welfare and worked directly with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to adapt the methodology from the health care arena to child welfare. She then worked closely with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network in 2005 to further adapt the model for the field of child trauma. Jen serves as a consultant to and partner in Breakthrough Series Collaboratives, Learning Collaboratives, and racial justice efforts being conducted by public and tribal child welfare agencies, child trauma agencies, health care organizations, and non-profits across the country with a continuous and explicit focus on racial justice.
Jen serves as a lead consultant for Breakthrough Series Collaborative initiatives being conducted by public child welfare agencies and non-profit organizations across the country as national, regional, and statewide efforts. In this role, Jen focuses on how organizational changes are tested, implemented, and ultimately sustained. Since she helped initially adapt the BSC methodology for application in child welfare in 2001, she has been involved in over 40 Learning and Breakthrough Series Collaboratives.
Most importantly, Jen brings racial justice and the need for anti-racist approaches, practices, and behaviors in all work with individuals and organizations. She strongly believes that no system can improve unless it explicitly and intentionally dismantles racism, White Supremacy Culture, and racial and social injustice. True system transformation requires understanding and addressing the historical racism that built our systems, the structural and institutional racism that currently exists within our systems, and the conscious and unconscious biases that impact our daily decision-making and relationships.
Jen received her Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a focus on Health, Education, and Labor Policy. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Yale University.