White House Author

Dee Ann Newell is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. Dee Ann attended college in New York City at Finch College and obtained a Master’s Degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University. 25 years ago, she was a volunteer, teaching parenting in prison and jail, and began serving the children and caregivers in 1994, founding the only statewide organization to serve these families, Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind. These services have been fine-tuned over the past two decades and have sustained the mission of justice for children and their families, including racial, social, family, economic, health, and education justice that will bring forth the safety, security and stability of these families and the children. The organization works with families from pre-entry through one year of post-release and longer. Dee Ann is the recipient of a Soros Foundation Senior Justice Fellowship of the Open Society, working with 14 state coalitions to improve practice and policies on behalf of the children of the incarcerated in these areas, serves on the National Re-Entry Resource Center on Families and Communities, coordinates the National Policy Partnership for Children of the Incarcerated, provides training at the University of California at Davis, and serves on the Central Arkansas Re-Entry Coalition Steering Committee.