Meet Our Consultants

Alise Morrissey (Hegle), BAS, is the Director of Family Impact at Children’s Home Society of Washington where she is responsible for the oversight, direction, development and administration of the Parents for Parents peer mentoring program model, as well as the promotion of family preservation and reunification within CHSW services, larger systems and public policy.

Ms. Morrissey works to ensure the child welfare birth parent perspective is incorporated in policy, practice and system reform efforts and provides leadership in the passage of state legislation. Her background of prior homelessness, and juvenile, criminal and child welfare system involvement lends critical insight into systemic barriers that impede a family’s opportunity to thrive and help to strengthen her system advocacy efforts.

Ms. Morrissey is passionate about preventing family separation and identifying concrete tangible ways communities can wrap around families. Additionally, she serves on national, state and local committees to include Harvard’s JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress, the Birth Parent National Network, and Casey Family Program’s Birth and Foster Parent Partnership.

She received a Casey Excellence for Children Award and was recognized as a National Hero for Reunification and Child Welfare by the American Bar Association, an Unsung Hero by Washington State’s Department of Early Learning and was also a Transforming Lives Award nominee. However, her greatest joy is celebrating life with her daughter she reunified with in 2010, experiencing the healing journey from parenting her new baby from day one, and raising a precious non-biological son who is thriving.

Angeline Montauban has devoted her life to abolitionist teaching and social justice activism. During the five years she navigated the foster care industrial complex, it opened her eyes to the harsh, cruel and punitive policies and practices that parents and children face in the foster care system.

She has a deep understanding of the plight of parents and children in foster care and her experience has made her not only question the U.S. child welfare system but transformed her into a fierce symbol for innovative change and dynamic results.

As a foster care abolitionist, she believes that a system that mirrors the prison industrial complex and rips families apart is not designed to provide opportunities for families to survive and thrive but rather should be abolished and re-imagined. She is a graduate of Hunter College and is currently pursuing graduate studies at Montclair State University. In her spare time, she likes to read short stories, poetry and spending time with her son.

Mr. Stephens has been a lifelong advocate for vulnerable children and families involved with the child welfare system. His passion and dedication stems from his personal journey spending his childhood in and out of the Georgia and Florida foster care system, due to his mother and father’s battle with substance use disorder and mental illness. Mr. Stephens mother is diagnosed with Schizophrenia and at age 10, his father committed suicide after murdering his girlfriend in an Atlanta hotel room.

Mr. Stephens is dedicated to ensuring access to education, physical and mental wellness and innovative technology such as virtual/augmented reality for foster youth and alumni are universal. Mr. Stephens is a 2019 graduate of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Fellowship where he led a team of healthcare professionals to Improve Quality of Life Outcomes for Florida’s Foster Youth and Families. He is the founder of Underdog Dream, a 501c not-for-profit working to provide foster youth with the opportunity to imagine the possibilities, see a future filled with purpose and live with intention.

He obtained a Master of Social Work and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Central Florida. Mr. Stephens is President and CEO of Phoenix Healthcare Consultants and currently serves as Research Faculty with Florida State University College of Medicine, Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine working on a special project with Florida's Department of Children and Families providing behavioral health training and consultations to child protective investigators, supervisors and leadership.

Jena Martin currently serves as the Director of Special Populations for Family Connection of South Carolina, ensuring our underserved and at-risk children receive appropriate and timely special education services. She supervisors 15 trained staff in delivering Triple P Steppingstone direct support and manages 4 NICU staff in 3 Children’s Hospitals within the state. Jena has over 15 years of experience providing care and support to families in a clinical setting as well as experience in the early childhood sector as a former preschool teacher.

She received her BA in English and minored in Early Childhood Education from the University of South Carolina in 2004. Afforded the opportunity to participate in a small scholarship cohort designed to strengthen leaders within the education sector in our state, she is currently pursuing a master’s in early childhood education with a graduation date of December 2020 from USC. She credits the impact of working with parents and professionals as part of the PTI for her motivation in seeking her degree. Her graduate course experience has strengthened her leadership skills and increased her knowledge in advocacy, decision and policy making efforts and collaboration.

Serving on multiple local and statewide boards for the well-being of children in our state, she represents both a parent and professional voice, hoping to impact system changes for our state’s most vulnerable.

Jena is a wife and a mother of four, 2 of whom receive special education services and one who has chronic health conditions. Her family grew through foster care, kinship care and four permanent adoptions. Through her work with FCSC and the PTI, Jena has provided peer to peer support as well as trainings for parents who have children with multiple disabilities, who need assistance navigating overwhelming systems of care such as health care, special education, and who have had experiences with the child welfare system. Jena brings a vast amount of knowledge through both her personal and professional shared experiences. Skilled in seeing the big picture and with a gift of collecting and analyzing data in a way that speaks both logistically and from the heart, her often times 30-foot view allows her to be a visionary, implementing processes and polices that advocate for equity and best practices for at risk children and youth.

Ned has been able to convert his experiences with trauma from abuse and neglect, his deep feelings of abandonment, judgment and isolation, along with his navigation of multiple non-bio homes towards work that changes systems, relentlessly focuses on including all, and helps people re-imagine pathways to healing.

For 27 years, Ned focused on international water and sanitation and launched a global initiative called Everyone Forever that forced sector changes in how programs were implemented, outcomes achieved, and funding flowed so that every family, school and clinic had water supply (Everyone) and never needed international aid or philanthropy (Forever) again. By the end of this year over 30 million people will have benefited from Everyone Forever, and $2.5 billion of annual spend has converted to support this work globally.

Ned joined Tennyson four years ago with a relentless focus on changing the pathways of children and families who are child welfare involved.  He is perhaps best known for launching an audacious effort to “rewire” child welfare in ways that reduce the number of children and families becoming child welfare involved, achieve better results for those who are involved, and clarify funding changes needed so that this work can inform a new sector funding paradigm that allows for replication. Rewiring shows promise, real spread and impact potential across Colorado and the United States, and Ned is looking forward to continuing this work in exciting ways.