LAPP - Board

President
GWEN MITCHELL is a retired family law attorney and former board president of Mills-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame, California

Treasurer
LOIS RAAP is a juvenile attorney specializing in representing foster and adoptive parents and a foster, guardianship and adoptive parent of children with special needs

Secretary
SHAUNA MULLINS is the President of the San Mateo County Foster Parent Association and a foster and adoptive parent

DR. WENDELL BROWN is a retired general practice physician who grew up in a foster and adoptive family

CHERESA BARRETT is a former foster youth who lived as a teen in a foster family home with her disabled son

DANIEL HOEBEKE is the Charitable Gift Planner at San Jose University, the CEO of Adopt-A-Chaplain, a non-profit organization serving US military chaplains in the Middle East, and an adoptive parent

REGINA DEIHL is the director of Legal Advocates for Permanent Parenting and a former foster parent

AMY PELLMAN is a Court Commissioner in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County and the former Legal Director of the Alliance for Children’s Rights

LAPP ADVISORY PANEL

Robin Allen is the Executive Director of California CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) Association, which provides training and technical assistance to California’s thirty-nine CASA programs.

Patricia Boles is the Executive Director of Straight From the Heart Foster and Adoptive Parent Resource Center in North San Diego County and a foster parent and adoptive mother of nine children.

Cecilia Fiermonte is the Assistant Director of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and a technical advisor to various states on the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act and related issues including permanency, reasonable efforts and foster parent rights. Her publications include Making It Permanent: Reasonable Efforts to Finalize Permanency Plans for Foster Children and Improving Outcomes Together: Court and Child Welfare Collaboration.

Janet Fitch is the author of White Oleander, the acclaimed novel about a pre-teen girl growing up in Los Angeles’ foster care system that was made into a major theatrical film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. She is an active supporter of children’s advocacy organizations.

Sarah Gerstenzang is the assistant director of the Collaboration to AdoptUskids, a national photo listing service for children awaiting adoption from foster care across the United States. She holds a Masters in Social Work degree from Columbia University and is the mother of three children, one of whom was adopted through foster care.

Professor Joan Heifetz Hollinger is the Director of the Child Advocacy Clinic at UC Berkeley Boalt School of Law, a leading American scholar on adoption law and practice, and an outspoken advocate in the courts and in the media on behalf of children’s rights. She is the principal author and editor of the three-volume treatise, Adoption Law and Practice and is currently working to revise the Uniform Parentage Act to ensure the equal treatment of children regardless of marital status of parents.

Jennifer Rodriquez is an attorney who emancipated from California’s foster care system at 18. She is the Legislative and Policy Coordinator for the California Youth Connection.

Senator Jack Scott is a California state legislator and former college president. Senator Scott holds a divinity degree from Yale University and is the author of several laws in California pertaining to adoption and foster parenting. He is an outspoken advocate for gun control and the adoptive grandparent of three.

Cassandra Wentt is the founder of the Adoption Law Pro Bono Project, a project of Bartholomew & Associates, a private firm of insurance counsel. Wentt, a graduate of UCLA Law School, handles adoption matters for families in the juvenile dependency system on a pro bono basis in conjunction with Public Counsel of Los Angeles. She is mother of five boys adopted from the Los Angeles foster care system.