The response to our announcement that we were closing was immediate and strong: allies across the country were committed to keeping this work alive. Together with over 50 of these allies, we envisioned a next chapter for the work that would be held outside an organizational structure – a mission transition. FFI then undertook a multi-month effort to connect and equip these activated allies with their top three stated needs: content, community connections and confidence. This included building out our Resource Library, setting up playlists of key videos and webinars on YouTube and investments in community building and connection.
A national cohort of Champions and Stewards is ensuring our shared North Star – a fair shot at wellbeing – remains bright and visible.
Thank you for all the tools and networks that emerged through FFI over the last decade+. All this richness will ensure that the movement for wellbeing for all goes on and that there are a legion of believers out there who will carry on! That was intentional on your part and also a wonderful gift you gave.
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FFI invited a group of allies and partners from the past 15 years to be recognized as Wellbeing Champions for their past contributions and commit to continuing the work moving forward. As of May 2025, over 100 of these individuals, hailing from diverse fields and backgrounds across the country, have signed on. Before ending organizational operations, FFI built community among Champions and equipped them with resources and tools beyond the public library.
Among the 100+ Champions are 19 Stewards, leaders who guided signature efforts to bring a fair shot at wellbeing into new fields and communities. Since 2009, these leaders’ efforts have demonstrated that it is absolutely possible to change policy and mental models to align with the universal drive for wellbeing. Stewards have signed on to take particular ownership and responsibility for the movement’s continuation. If you have questions about how the work lives on, or how each Steward is involved, please contact them directly. To learn more about the team that brought FFI’s work to a close, check out Our People.
Get to know the Stewards! Read more below and watch them share about wellbeing in their own words in our YouTube playlist.
Learn Why Miki is a Wellbeing Steward
Miki Akimoto is the Chief Impact Officer at the National Center for Family Philanthropy. In this role, she partners with the CEO to help move the NCFP strategic plan forward, align and integrate revenue, relationship management and program strategies, enhance sector partnerships and ensure a strong measurement and evaluation plan. She oversees the program, communications and development teams.
Most recently, Miki served as a Senior Philanthropic Strategist at Bank of America’s Private Bank. In that role, she provided consultation and support to families, foundations and major nonprofits about their governance, grantmaking and impact strategies. Prior to joining the Bank of America, Miki was Vice President and then Acting President of Philanthropy Massachusetts, the regional association of foundations, corporate givers and other key donors in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She has also served as the first Director of Grants Management for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and as a program officer at the Corporation for National Service/AmeriCorps.
She is actively involved in the philanthropic community nationally and locally. She is the president of the board of Third Sector Holdings and also serves as Chair of the board of the Full Frame Initiative. Past board experience includes Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, YWCA Boston, the Boston Foundation for Architecture, and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grant Makers. She is a co-founder of the Saffron Circle, the first Asian Giving Circle in Massachusetts.
She holds a Bachelor of Political Science degree from Stanford University, and lives in Medford, Massachusetts. In her spare time, she bakes, reads, and travels to far flung places whenever she can.
Learn Why Sandy is a Wellbeing Steward
Two threads cut across Sandy’s career lattice – justice and curiosity. With nearly 40 years of experience in philanthropy, she has strong expertise in human services, arts and culture, green buildings, and civil legal justice.
Sandy currently works with partners to advance the transformation of the civil legal justice system so that policies, practices, and supports give everyone a fair shot at wellbeing. She serves as a non-resident Fellow at the Urban Institute; volunteer navigator with Michigan Legal Help; board member of the Michigan Municipal League Foundation and Green Pro Bono; and Trustee of the Grosse Pointe Park Public Library. Previously, Sandy was a Senior Fellow and Senior Program Officer at The Kresge Foundation, where she developed strategic and layered investments to address critical issues. She was named a 2016 Presidio Institute Fellow and participated in the fellowship program to build cross sector leadership skills to address complex social challenges.
A U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional, Sandy developed Kresge’s Green Building Initiative to encourage nonprofits to design environmentally sustainable facilities. Sandy is a graduate of Tufts University, where she focused on Asian Studies and Mandarin Chinese.
Learn Why Gary is a Wellbeing Steward
Gary Anderson is the Co-Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the Plowshares Theatre Company. Anderson is a founding member of the National Advisory Committee of the Black Seed, a first-ever national strategic plan to create an impact for Black theater institutions. A 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow from the Kresge Foundation, he is a noted expert in Black Theatre. A Senior Fellow for the Full Frame Initiative, his various awards include becoming a 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow, the 2002 Michiganian of the Year Award from The Detroit News; the Alain Locke Cultural Arts Award from The Friends of African and African American Art, Detroit Institute of Arts; and The Lawrence DeVine Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Theatre from The Detroit Free Press.
Learn Why Chris is a Wellbeing Steward
Chris Ash is a genderqueer movement organizer, writer, storyteller, and teacher from the southeastern United States, currently living in France. A survivor of multiple forms of violence, their work integrates gender, sexuality, consent, trauma, healing, spirituality, and social justice.
Ash’s advocacy began in 1994 as a suicide hotline counselor and LGBTQ organizer. Currently, they are the co-founder of Collective Threads Initiative – a cross-movement mobilization of grassroots efforts to address human trafficking and exploitation – and just completed an appointment to the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, providing recommendations and guidance to federal agencies addressing human trafficking in the Biden administration.
Prior to these roles, Ash transformed the National Survivor Network of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast) into a collective-power-building group of changemakers, co-developed the Meaningful Engagement of People with Lived Experience framework, and co-authored resources supporting empowered storytelling for social change. They also trained crisis centers across North Carolina on anti-human trafficking and prevention, and provided hotline response, support groups, and hospital accompaniment for survivors. Ash coordinated the first entirely survivor-developed Capitol Hill briefing and conducts research with UNC-Chapel Hill on survivor storytelling experiences.
A dynamic speaker and trainer for organizations including Freedom Network USA and HEAL Trafficking, they collaborate with partners including the DHS Blue Campaign, the University of Liverpool, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They are passionate about violence prevention, harm reduction, and FFI’s Wellbeing Framework.
Learn Why Tamara is a Wellbeing Steward
Tamara Bauman is a dedicated community organizer and housing advocate with extensive experience in the nonprofit sector. Currently, Tamara serves as a Leadership Team Member of Washington State’s Lived Experience Coalition where she co-leads the “Mental Health Advocacy and Wellbeing” Committee. Concurrently, Tamara is a seated member of the CoC System Performance Committee and is leading the effort to embed Wellbeing Blueprint principles into our HMIS database, project evaluations, and procurement policies. Similarly, as a Board Member of the Seattle-King County Continuum of Care, Tamara contributes to the governance of local homeless response systems. Tamara’s previous roles include Case Management Coordinator at Lifelong and Shelter Women’s Advocate at New Beginnings, with an educational background that includes a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Colorado Denver and a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies from the University of Washington.
Learn Why Phyllis is a Wellbeing Steward
Phyllis is a dedicated human services leader with a strong commitment to youth, families, and communities. She has extensive experience in juvenile justice reform, community engagement, and professional development. Previously, she served as the director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services, where her focus was on strengthening the Missouri Approach. This approach is recognized for providing a comprehensive and integrated treatment plan that prioritizes the wellbeing and positive outcomes for youth and their families.
She has consulted for various nonprofits and government agencies, focusing on results-based accountability, leadership development, school-based and school-linked services, youth justice reform, and facilitated planning processes. Phyllis is also on the steering committee for Youth Correctional Leaders for Justice and Senior Fellow and a Senior Fellow with the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
As a Senior Fellow for the Full Frame Initiative (FFI), Phyllis emphasizes that organizations and services should align their policies, practices, and structures to support the wellbeing of individuals and communities they serve. She is also instrumental in bringing a wellbeing design framework to Youth Justice. She has co-authored with Henry Ramos the op-ed, More Policing Won’t Solve Youth Crime, and a position paper for the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators, The Importance of Creating and Sustaining Organizational Wellbeing in Juvenile Justice with Penny Sampson and Valerie Boykin.
Phyllis is a published poet and coordinates a literary reading series in Kansas City. She and her husband, Mark, are jazz enthusiasts.
Learn Why Ben is a Wellbeing Steward
Ben is currently serving as the Family Court Administrator in St. Louis County overseeing the Family Court’s policy implementation, personnel and budget. He previously served as the legislative director for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and as a judge in the community where he was born and raised. He is a proud graduate of Saint Louis University, Gonzaga University and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Ben is very proud of his work with the Full Frame Initiative relating to the domains and the tradeoffs that youth and their families face when they deal with adversity.
Ben and his wife, Sarah, are very proud of their three adult children.
Learn Why Xav is a Wellbeing Steward
Xavier (Xav) de Souza Briggs is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where much of his work focuses on government effectiveness, collaborative governance, AI and the future of work, and addressing growing impacts of climate change and extreme weather. With Katya Fels Smyth, he co-authored The Infrastructure of Wellbeing and How to Create Shovel-Worthy Infrastructure, on shaping the built environment to expand access to wellbeing for everyone.
An award-winning educator and researcher, formerly on the faculty at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of technology, he is also an experienced manager in philanthropy and government. His books include The Geography of Opportunity, Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities Across the Globe, and Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty.
Prior to joining Brookings, Briggs served as vice president of the Ford Foundation, overseeing its inclusive economies and markets work globally along with its regional program teams based in China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. He was a member of the board executive committee for Living Cities, a consortium of America’s largest private foundations and financial companies. Previously, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, faculty affiliate at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, and program associate director in the White House Office and Management and Budget, where he oversaw a wide array of policy, budget and management issues for roughly half of the cabinet agencies of the federal government.
Learn Why Tim is a Wellbeing Steward
Tim Decker served as a State Agency Director in Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare in Missouri for eleven-and-half years from 2007-2018. Tim retired from state government in 2018 after serving for 34 years in a variety of leadership positions with the Missouri Department of Social Services and the Greater Kansas City Local Investment Commission (LINC), one of the nation’s most innovative public/private community partnerships.
During his tenure as Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services from 2007-2013, the agency won the 2008 Harvard Innovations in American Government Award for Child and Family System Reform and hosted site visits from over 30 states.. The agency increased educational completion rates by over 87%, reduced recidivism and increased productive involvement rates, and safely reduced the number of youths in custody.
As Missouri’s Child Welfare Director Tim led a major system transformation in agency practice, policy, leadership, and culture. The Missouri Practice Model was co-created through significant engagement of young people, families, and front-line child welfare practitioners as a developmental and trauma-informed approach to child and family safety and wellbeing.
Missouri’s transformation was featured in numerous publications and through national and international conferences, and in 2018 Tim was selected as a “Reunification Hero” by the American Bar Association.
In 2019, Tim authored a visionary publication entitled “A Roadmap to the Ideal Juvenile Justice System. He is a member of the Georgetown University Juvenile Justice Reform (CJJR) Fellows Network and one of the co-creators of the Youth in Custody Certificate Program.
Tim founded Social Innovation Partners, LLC to support leaders interested in government, community, non-profit, and private-sector innovation in child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and family and youth development.
Learn Why Malikah is a Wellbeing Steward
Malikah Garner is a mother, advocate, entrepreneur and the Mommy Ambassador At-Large at Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association (BMBFA) in Detroit, MI. She is the co-founder and leader of the Mommy Ambassador program. Malikah’s passion for breastfeeding and maternal child health advocacy is centered on community support, impacting institutional policy, and inclusion in the breastfeeding community.
She has a background in marketing and project management with a degree from Saginaw Valley State University and a Master of Business Administration from Northwood University. In 2019, she founded Detroit Youth Code, a computer programming bootcamp focused on training and inspiring Detroit’s youth as the next generation of STEM leaders.
Malikah is a proud advocate for the community. In 2021, she joined Hope Starts Here, Detroit’s Early Childhood Partnership to help make Detroit a city that puts children first. As a Mommy Ambassador with BMBFA, she has published articles about her breastfeeding journey and advocacy, and her perspective on normalizing Black breastfeeding has been featured on national platforms such as Good Morning America. She joined the FFI team in 2022, eager to learn from and collaborate with other leaders across the country on community centered solutions and to build a community bill of rights.
Malikah is the proud mother of two amazing boys, Nolan and Aaron. She enjoys fitness, archery, reading and spending time with family & friends. Malikah is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Detroit Alumnae Chapter.
Urban planner by trade, Elka’s work includes community and economic development, consensus-building and facilitation, public policy, and comprehensive land use planning. Having worked in over 30 cities and towns nationally and internationally, Elka believes planning as a field can be leveraged to right our relationships with land and labor. Her approach is rooted in respect for local knowledge alongside an endless sense of curiosity.
Full Frame’s wellbeing lens has deeply influenced Elka’s worldview. Professionally, she sees wellbeing as a key to understanding people’s motivations, which helps her navigate and reframe community disagreements. For instance, in her housing work, she has observed how fear of change, loss, or instability can present as NIMBYism. By addressing these underlying motivations, she often finds that communities become more receptive to new ideas around housing and gentle density.
Currently, Elka serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Housing Solutions and Community Initiatives at Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress. Previously, she worked as the City Planner for the City of Newburgh, NY, and as a Senior Associate at Project for Public Spaces. She began her planning career as Community Planner at the West Downtown Jerusalem Community Council.
Learn Why Helen is a Wellbeing Steward
Helen Johnson is president of the Michigan Municipal League Foundation. Prior to coming to the League, she founded CityLove Collaborative to combine her passion for cities, creativity, and +collaboration with a persistent desire to help others achieve their goals. For 20+ years, including as the VP at the Quicken Loans Community Fund, as a Program Officer for the Kresge Foundation, and Co-Founder of CreateHere, Helen built and implemented bold, entrepreneurial and innovative nonprofit and philanthropic work that improves the quality of life for culturally and economically diverse community residents, nurtures place-based opportunity, and drives equitable impact. Solutions-oriented and entrepreneurial, Helen’s experience also includes the successful development of organizational strategy, marketing and communications, cross-sector initiatives and public/private partnerships. Her work has been featured in FastCompany, ModelD, Media, Garden and Gun, to name a few.
Helen lives in Oakland County, MI. She is the proud mom of Emma and William, is married to an amazing guy named Bill, and loves making sourdough bread and painting in her free time.
Learn Why Audrey is a Wellbeing Steward
Audrey is currently an independent consultant with her own practice – ADJ Consulting and Coaching. Audrey’s consulting areas of expertise are in capacity building for resident-centered, place-based community change; cultivating community, organizational and collaborative partnership capacities for results accountability; and teaching about and facilitating conversations to promote racial equity and social justice. Audrey is also a certified executive life coach, focused on “accompanying social justice leaders and teams to unchain power for transformation.”
Before moving to California five years ago, Audrey served in various staff roles in philanthropy, most recently in Boston, Massachusetts (2010-2012), and before that for twelve years at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, MD. Before her stint in philanthropy, Audrey accumulated more than fifteen years of work experience in participatory evaluation research in public agencies, non-profits and in academia in Virginia. She was director of Community Evaluation at the Center for Public Policy’s Survey and Evaluation Research Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has an M.A. in Social Psychology from The University of Virginia’s Social Psychology program, is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Master of Social Work program, and a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University doctoral program in Social Work and Social Policy. Audrey currently lives in Fontana, CA, joyfully reunited with her family of origin.
Learn Why Kellie is a Wellbeing Steward
Kellie Landaker is the Membership Director for Midwest Urban Strategies. She comes to M.U.S. after retiring from a 42-year career in human services. She retired as the Director of the juvenile detention center in St Louis County, Missouri. She is the founder and owner of Fortified Wellbeing LLC, a coaching and consulting firm. Kellie holds a B.A. in Sociology, an Academic Certificate in counseling with juvenile offenders, and an M.S. in Management and Leadership. She is certified to provide training in Mental Health for Juvenile Justice Workers, Law of Attraction, crisis prevention, Girls’ Circle (One Circle) and is a Life Coach certified through American Union of Neurolinguistics. She has done extensive collaboration and has presented workshops on trauma, group work, leadership, law of attraction, manifesting, case planning, community engagement, among many other topics. Kellie joined MUS and built her business by doing what she loves to do the most, teaching, program development, conducting workshops, coaching, and consulting. Kellie lives in St Louis and has two grown sons, a tiny canine companion, and a beautiful chosen family.
Learn Why Ceasar is a Wellbeing Steward
Ceasar L. McDowell is a Professor of the Practice of Civic Design at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His current work is the design of inclusive democratic processes capable of supporting beloved, just, and equitable communities that can – as his friend Carl Moore says – “peacefully struggle with traditions that bind and the interests that separate in order to build a future that is a just improvement on the past.”
Ceasar co-hosts MIT’s WeWhoEngage podcast series and co-leads OpenDocLab. Founder of MIT’s CoLab and Civic Designers consulting. He recently served as Associate Department Head for the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Associate Director of MIT’s Center for Constructive Communications. and co-chair of the Masters and City Planning Program. He has also been Director of the global civic engagement organization Dropping Knowledge International, President of Interaction Institute for Social Change, co-founder of The Civil Rights Forum on Telecommunications Policy, and founding Board member of The Algebra Project.
Learn Why Patrick is a Wellbeing Steward
Patrick McNeal is the Director of the North Flint Neighborhood Action Council (NFNAC). The NFNAC brings together residents, school leaders and community stakeholders in some of the most economically disenfranchised areas of Flint, MI to plan, implement, and sustain comprehensive revitalization efforts that improve the lives of residents and provide them with the loudest voice in that change and helping them to remember ‘nothing about us without us.” He is also the Lead Facilitator/Certified Life Coach of Community Roots, a coaching and consulting firm based in Flint, MI that seeks to help individuals, community groups, churches and nonprofits identify and engage with issues of poverty, access, racial reconciliation and others in the mission field near their physical location. He is also a certified Digital Storyteller/Trainer through the Story Center. He utilizes his gift of storytelling to assist individuals and groups to share their story utilizing their own voice.
A believer in lifelong learning, Patrick has earned both a Masters in Educational Leadership from Eastern Michigan University and a Masters of Divinity from Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. Patrick also serves his community through the Conflict Resolution Center as a certified mediator. His service to the poor, combined with his passion for telling and showing all that will see and hear that there is life in the Word of God, are so vividly illustrated in the verses that continue to guide his life: “Trust in the LORD will all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3: 5,6)
Learn Why Charyti is a Wellbeing Steward
Charyti Reiter (she/her) has over 25 years of experience in the human service field working with and advocating for survivors of domestic violence and people who are experiencing homelessness. As the Director of Clinical Services at On The Rise in Cambridge, MA for the past 20 years, she has witnessed the transformative power of relationships, and she works to build those relationships as a helper, a colleague, a collaborator, and a community member.
A social worker by training, Charyti believes in meeting people where they are and building on their strengths and resilience. Seeing people as people and not as their problems and understanding that life is messy are fundamental values that guide all of her work. She is also committed to advocating for change within the systems that perpetuate inequities.
Originally from Kansas and a proud Jayhawk, Charyti now lives in Newton, MA with her husband Steve, their giant dog, and two adorable cats. She is also the proud mom of Sam who is a student at the University of South Carolina.
Learn Why John is a Wellbeing Steward
As a researcher focusing on climate change’s impact on land use, infrastructure and community “climigration,” John has been FFI’s partner for exploring how wellbeing can inform how we plan for the coasts of the United States as seas rise and storms become more intense and frequent.
John’s nearly 50-year career is based on collaboration across disciplines and with communities. He is presently a full-time professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, following eight years as the chair of Pratt’s four urbanism programs. For the prior 25 years, he was a principal of the planning consultancy Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, earning more than twenty awards for his work and contributions. John has prepared virtually every planning work across urban, metropolitan, rural and suburban locales. John is exuberant when visiting and learning about a new city, whether for work or pleasure. Yet, as a city kid (or perhaps because he is), his “happy place” is found in forests and on lakes.
John’s research is on how to keep environmental justice from spiraling with climate change. To assure that, his outlook is that we must incorporate wellbeing (including for nature) into making the decisions, addressing the controversies and spending the trillions needed for “climigration” and new infrastructure. The aim is to create a better future, not just protect what we have.
Learn Why Laura is a Wellbeing Steward
Laura Green Zeilinger was most recently the Director of the District of Columbia Department of Human Services (DHS). Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed her to lead DHS in January 2015. During her decade-long tenure, she was responsible for guiding the Department’s 1,500 personnel and budget of $933 million. Laura led the transformations of DC’s homeless services system, TANF program and expansion of diversion programs for young people.
Prior to her appointment as DHS director, Laura served as the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), where she was responsible for the implementation of Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, an effort that includes the coordination of federal homelessness policies among 19 federal departments and agencies, as well as partnerships with state and local communities, non-profits, and the private sector. She has also led international economic development efforts, managing a technical assistance project to reform the pension system in The Republic of Kazakhstan.
Laura is an alumna of Sarah Lawrence College and a graduate of the Washington College of Law at American University.
This movement belongs to everyone who believes in a fair shot – hopefully, that includes you!
To continue your learning journey, dive into our Resource Library or explore how to bring wellbeing concepts to your system in our Wellbeing Bootcamp.