Young People Lead - Standing on Policy

Join a panel of advocates, policymakers, and leaders as they examine child well-being policy in California. The discussion highlights how laws like the California Fostering Connections to Success Act have supported youth aging out of foster care, while revealing persistent gaps in housing, education, and mental health services. Panelists share personal experiences, innovative programs, and policy initiatives that center youth voice, prioritize relationships over compliance, and aim to ensure stable housing, education pathways, and healing for transition-age youth. This session emphasizes actionable strategies for strengthening communities, dismantling barriers, and creating systems that empower young people to thrive.

Join Dr. Charity Chandler-Cole as she shares her journey from a system-involved youth to transformative leader, mother, and advocate. Drawing from lived experience, she explores how urgency and love must work together to create lasting change in child welfare and justice systems. In this keynote, Dr. Chandler-Cole challenges us to question policies that harm, act swiftly to remove barriers for children, and design systems that center dignity, hope, and joy. This is a call to action for policymakers, community members, and advocates to align daily actions with deep convictions and ensure every child grows up seen, supported, and valued.

In this episode, fellows confront how stereotypes and low expectations push foster youth toward the juvenile justice system, where a single mistake can carry lifelong consequences. Through lived experience and a conversation with Melissa Milchman of Coalition for Juvenile Justice, the episode examines how system involvement disrupts education, housing, and opportunity, and how community-based solutions can interrupt these cycles. This conversation affirms that accountability and healing are possible without punishment defining a young person’s future.

In this episode, fellows share firsthand experiences of aging out of care and navigating housing instability, naming the fear, shame, and resilience that accompany life without a safe place to land. The conversation expands with insights from Victor Hinderliter of Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, who breaks down the systemic roots of youth homelessness and the community-based solutions that can interrupt it. Together, the episode makes clear that housing justice is essential to dignity, healing, and young people leading their own futures.

In this episode, fellows reflect on how foster care, housing instability, and systemic inequity shape young people’s educational journeys, often turning schools into sites of harm instead of support. Through personal testimony and a conversation with Derek Steele of Social Justice Learning Institute, the episode explores education as both a barrier and a powerful tool for healing, civic engagement, and community transformation. This conversation asks what education could look like if it were truly designed for young people to thrive.

In this opening episode, young leaders with lived experience in foster care and youth homelessness speak candidly about what it means to be heard, believed, and empowered within systems that often fail them. Panelists reflect on resilience, racial and gender identity, gatekeeping, and the power of community in shaping their advocacy. This conversation sets the foundation for a series grounded in truth-telling, imagination, and young people leading change now.

In our 6th and final episode of Season 1, Host Jordyn Wilson brings together the youth policy consultants for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Lashawnda Kilgore to discuss her research on child well-being, as well as share key takeaways from the series.

Episode 5 of Season 1 takes a look at the ways that youth voice is being incorporated into changes in child welfare policy. Host Daftne Sanchez has two brilliant conversations with guests Idelia Robinson-Confer and Sixto Cancel. Join host Daftne Sanchez and co-host Jordyn Wilson to learn more.

Episode 4 of Season 1 of the Young People Lead podcast is all about the workforce. Join host Cody Rooney and co-host Kyla Woods, as they discuss how workforce policy impacts young people presently, and how young people can take part in changing the landscape of work for future generations. This is an insightful conversation with guests Mary Kay Dugan, a researcher with the American Institutes for Research, and Alexis Obinna, a youth advocate with New Deal for Youth and consultant. You won't wan to miss it!

Episode 3 of Season 1 of the Young People Lead podcast is all about the youth legal system. Join host Mantryll Williams and co-host Tyra Beamon as they discuss how young people are making changes to policies in the legal system with guests Professor Latoya Thomas, Professor of Criminology and Sociology, and Jordyn Wilson, Youth Justice Campaign Associate at The Sentencing Project. Credible Messenger Mentoring programs are mentioned in this episode. If you would like to learn more, check out our sister series The Credible Messenger Podcast.

This is Episode 2 of Season 1 on education. Join us for an enlightening conversation about how young people can lead in education policy making, with a special focus on accessibility to higher education for students of color and those with disabilities. In this episode, Youth Policy Consultant (YPC) Tyra Beamon and her co-host YPC Cody Rooney, sit down for an engaging discussion with AIR Equity Initiative Managing Director Terris Ross and Young Education Researcher Gabriel Montague.

Episode 1, Season 1: Join us for an enlightening conversation on how we can ensure that the leaders of our movements are consistently passing power from one generation to the next, with joy! Welcome to the first episode in the new Young People Lead podcast, powered by Children's Defense Fund. In this episode, Youth Policy Consultant (YPC) Kyla Woods and her co-host YPC Tryll Williams, sit down for an engaging discussion with Children's Defense Fund CEO and President Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, and his Executive Assistant and youth organizer Channing Hill.

Credible Messenger Podcast now has a SISTER PODCAST! Following the success of The Credible Messenger Podcast, American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), supported by a new strategic agreement to merge its resources into Children's Defense Fund, is about to drop a new six-part series on the value of the youth voice in policy making, hosted by six AYPF Youth Policy Consultants. This new podcast is called the “Young People Lead” podcast, the podcast that demonstrates that YOUNG PEOPLE CAN and SHOULD LEAD by telling stories from the front lines of where youth are transforming policies for the better, as well as examining research on the policies that most affect us.  This first season, we’re standing on policy. That’s right. Season 1 is dedicated to “Standing on Policy: Activating our Generation.” Throughout this first season, six of us youth policy consultants will take you, our listeners, on a journey to understand how young people are making a difference in the policies that affect them most. We will talk to experts, researchers, and youth leaders working on policies in education, the legal system, child welfare, and the workforce.  If you are a young person looking to catalyze change, this podcast is for you! We also invite researchers and leaders in youth-focused organizations across the country to listen in, because we are sure you’re going to want to hear what our forthright guests and passionate young adult policy consultants have to say! ive us a listen and a follow wherever you get your podcasts. We know you’re going to love this series!