Monthly Meeting: A Voice for Vulnerable Children, the CASA Approach

Guest Speaker Josiah Brown is Executive Director of Connecticut CASA (https://www.connecticutcasa.org/), which is part of the national CASA network. CASA addresses the needs of children facing abuse and/or neglect and in need of court-appointed special advocates. Before working at CASA, Josiah was the first associate director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. He worked with New Leaders for a summer during its start-up, responsible for researching prospective partner cities. Previously, he was chief of staff to the president of the New School in New York City. In earlier roles, Brown was an aide to U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro and to the director of a foundation-sponsored center at Columbia University. He worked for UConn Upward Bound and ConnPIRG and has volunteered with various urban youth organizations and public schools--including as a member of the New Haven Public Schools' Community Engagement Team.

As a volunteer, he is a former president of Domestic Violence Services of Greater New Haven. He is a founding board member of, and now chairs, the Literacy Coalition of Greater New Haven. He coaches youth basketball during winter. At Yale, since 2008 he has been an associate fellow of Saybrook College and adviser to students there. He is an occasional contributor to the Good Men Project, New Haven Independent, and Times of India, and to a blog at www.josiahbrown.org.

He has a B.A. with distinction in history, magna cum laude, from Yale and a master’s in public policy from Harvard.

He and his wife, Sahar Usmani-Brown, live in New Haven with their two children.

Mr. Brown will be joined by Dwayne Jackson, a CASA volunteer from Meriden, Conn.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/81444530449