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Jessica Newman serves as a Policy Research Fellow at First Focus. Prior to joining First Focus, Jessica devoted much of her undergraduate and law school careers to studying child welfare policy and advocacy. Most recently, Jessica served as a legal clerk with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the General Counsel for the Children, Families, and Aging Division. While at HHS, Jessica provided legal support in such areas as Head Start, child support enforcement, child abuse and neglect, foster care, adoption assistance, temporary assistance to needy families, and matters pertaining to senior citizens.
Before working for HHS, Jessica was a summer associate at Children’s Rights, Inc. in New York City, a non-profit dedicated to reform of child welfare systems nationwide through the use of impact litigation. In this role, she helped compose legal memoranda detailing the due process rights of children in foster care and conducted research on the efficacy of various reforms implemented by the consent decrees and court orders imposed by Children’s Rights and the courts. Jessica was awarded her law school’s David S. Becker Public Interest Fellowship to fund her efforts at Children’s Rights, an honor given in recognition of her dedication to public interest work.
Prior to working at Children’s Rights, Jessica worked as a legal intern for KidsVoice, a child advocacy organization in Pittsburgh, where she was able to work directly with foster youth. In this capacity, Jessica assisted the KidsVoice attorneys as they protected the needs and interests of youth in the Allegheny County Foster Care System through direct representation.
As an undergraduate student at Michigan State University’s James Madison College, Jessica conducted a research project examining the Michigan foster care system's attempts at reconstruction and reformation, and subsequently interned with the Michigan Department of Human Services in their child welfare policy division.
Jessica holds a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, and a B.A. in Social Relations and Policy from James Madison College at Michigan State University.
