About Child Welfare Wonk
Child Welfare Wonk™ is a strategic policy intelligence platform delivering critical, data-driven policy insights to the most influential decision-makers in child and family policy.
Our analysis informs the work of policymakers, providers, philanthropies, and advocates across the national, state, and local levels.
We offer the intelligence layer decision-makers need: analysis and projections grounded in historical context, real-time insight, and future-focused strategy.
Wonk Briefing Room:
Premium Community
If you enjoy the Weekly Wonk newsletter, you should know it’s just the flyer for what we have to offer. We help partners write the policy future, not react to it.
The Wonk Briefing Room is our premium community.
Learn more about premium memberships.
Partnering with Wonk
Leaders often share with us that they’re tired of feeling like their organization is stuck reacting to things. They can sense they’re missing strategic opportunities.
Organizations partner with Wonk to stay in front of fast-moving policy change. Our approach has offered partners benefits that have included:
Keeping state advocates clear on why key trends and opportunities matter;
Showing state and local leaders what matters now for their top priority; and
Surfacing critical openings to shape new policy as organizations build strategy.
Partnerships combine strategic sessions and leadership briefings with broad premium access for your team.
Want to partner?
Reach out to learn about what we offer state agencies and organizations.
Our Approach
We don’t just break down policy news; we break it open. We use data, policymaking insight, and narrative clarity to surface the story under the story.
We’re rigorously nonpartisan. Subscribers with diametrically opposed politics say the same thing: “This is exactly what I need.”
We don’t tell subscribers what to think. We show them what to think about; what others are missing, what’s next, and which policy levers actually move systems.
Meet Our Leadership
Zach Laris, MPH
Founder & CEO
Zach founded Child Welfare Wonk to change how data and narratives inform child and family policy. He blends policy expertise, pragmatism about the policymaking process, and a sense of humor into the organization’s North Star.
He began Child Welfare Wonk as a newsletter, before scaling it into a strategic policy intelligence firm to serve a critical unmet need: actionable intel for decision-makers.
His vision emerged from a passion for writing clear, compelling, and comprehensive resources to inform cross-partisan child and family policy deliberations.
He previously spent 12 years at the American Academy of Pediatrics, where he oversaw and grew the federal child welfare policy and advocacy team.
Andrés Argüello, MBA/MA, MSc
Founding Director, Narrative Intelligence
Andrés provides editorial leadership for the contributions of top-tier writers and strategists and leads our analysis of policy intelligence to generate actionable insights.
He brings deep and cross-cutting expertise across child and family policy, including our core focuses of health, human services, and economic policy.
Andrés most recently served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and before that as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of HHS on child and family policy.
Majd Abdallah
Director, Operations and Growth
Majd is building our operational capacity and growing our premium partnerships network to help partners be more effective in their work.
He brings experience in foster family recruitment, youth advocacy, and child welfare systems improvement. A graduate of Clemson University with a B.S. in Marketing, Majd has contributed to advocacy efforts at both the state and national levels.
Bram Rawlings
WonkCast Producer
Bram Rawlings is a D.C.-based political researcher and graduate of Wheaton College, IL, where he studied Theology and Classical Languages. He is passionate about all things policy.
Ada Stiglbauer
Publications and Marketing Associate
Ada Stiglbauer is a Marketing & Publications Associate at Child Welfare Wonk, where she leads digital communications, content strategy, and storytelling to connect child welfare professionals with the ideas, insights, and conversations shaping the field.
With a background in economic development, she brings a systems-level perspective to understanding how public policy, workforce, and community investment intersect to shape outcomes for children and families.
Our Senior Contributors
Doug Steiger, MPP
Senior Contributor
Doug is a Senior Contributor, bringing expertise on how policy gets made to provide insights on what’s possible in child and family policy.
Doug is a public policy consultant, previously served as a Counselor to the HHS Secretary during the Obama Administration, and was a Senate staffer for 12 years.
Laura Radel, MPP
Senior Contributor
Laura is a Senior Contributor, bringing deep expertise on child welfare policy and research on the children and families who interact with the child welfare system.
Before retiring, she spent 35 years analyzing child welfare issues for the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is Child Welfare Wonk?
Child Welfare Wonk provides policy intelligence to leaders across child and family policy. Our analysis helps decision-makers understand what matters, how power and policymaking work, and the strategic approaches that can advance their priorities. Our work includes newsletters, policy and financing analysis, the WonkCast podcast, briefings, and organizational partnerships.
2. Who is Child Welfare Wonk for?
Wonk serves people making consequential decisions in child and family policy: public agency leaders, policymakers, advocates, philanthropy, service providers, and researchers. Our audience is cross-partisan, bringing different political perspectives and priorities. What they share is a need to understand the policy landscape and make informed decisions about their work.
3. What is WonkCast: People Power Policy?
WonkCast is a podcast where smart, strategic leaders think out loud about making hard decisions under uncertainty and constraint.
Founder and host Zach Laris talks with people across the ideological spectrum, exploring how they think and what their insights mean for the field. Those conversations also inform Wonk’s written analysis. You can find WonkCast on our Substack here.
4. What topics does Wonk cover?
Wonk covers child welfare and broader child and family policy. Topics include everything from foster care, kinship care, and adoption to safety net policies, Medicaid and health policy, early childhood issues, and more. Across these subjects, we look at policy incentives, competing interests, the relationship between financing and policy, where authority lies, and the opportunities and constraints shaping what happens next.
5. What does Wonk add to news and policy updates?
Wonk gives you something more valuable than just more information: synthesis and context to understand why it matters. We connect developments to the policy landscape and the strategic approaches that can advance your priorities. From our wide offerings, you can get a full picture of the breadth of issues challenging our field.
6. Does Wonk advocate for particular policy positions?
No. Wonk provides independent analysis for people working across political and ideological differences. We don’t tell you what to think about an issue. We tell you the tensions within that issue that you need to be thinking about. We examine evidence, assumptions, authority, and competing interests so you can make decisions that advance your priorities.
7. How do people use Wonk’s work?
Partners and readers use Wonk to prepare leadership conversations, educate their networks, develop strategy, and understand policy and financing opportunities. Our work has:
Helped jurisdictional leaders see what new federal policy and oversight means for their priorities;
Served as curriculum for state and nonprofit leaders learning financing policy;
Kept state advocates apprised on Medicaid and child welfare policy shifts relevant to their goals.
8. What is available free, and what comes with paid access?
Child Welfare Wonk’s Weekly Wonk newsletter and WonkCast podcast are free. Premium membership adds frameworks, tools, and diagnostic questions that you can use to move your priorities forward. Organizational partnerships combine access to Wonk’s resources with briefings and strategic conversations focused on a team’s priorities. Learn more about going premium here.
9. How can organizations and public agencies work with Wonk?
Organizations and public agencies partner with Wonk to build shared understanding across their teams and apply our policy intelligence to their priorities at scale.
There’s relentless noise trying to distract your organization from its clear goals. Our partnerships give you the clarity to cut through it. Just a handful of the ways our work has benefitted partners include:
An association whose members see timely insight they can act on as a “valuable strategic benefit”
A coalition of state advocates who find partnership key to “demystifying the federal policy landscape”
Public agency leaders who want to know what federal policy change means for them, and what’s possible.
Partnerships combine ongoing access to our resources with confidential briefings and strategic conversations.
Reach out at these links to learn more about what we offer for organizations and state agencies.
10. What are Wonk anchor partnerships and episode sponsorships?
Anchor partnerships combine sustained public association with WonkCast and a working relationship with Wonk, including Briefing Room access and a leadership briefing. Anchor partners receive recognition across podcast episodes and release emails, with category exclusivity during their term.
Episode sponsorships provide a short, non-exclusive bumper in independently developed episodes. Wonk retains editorial control over guest selection, questions, and published conversations in both arrangements.
Reach out to set up time to learn more here.
