I’m pleased to share a column in the Spring 2026 issue of Policy & Practice that reflects on what writing American Welfare: Reclaiming the Dream for All of U.S. taught me about human services leadership.
The piece, “The Future We Build Together,” is both a reflection and an invitation. Writing the book gave me the distance to see more clearly what I witnessed for years alongside state, local, and community-based leaders: the steady, often underrecognized work of building systems that help families find stability, strengthen trust, and expand possibility.
Human services are not peripheral to democracy. They are infrastructure, the quiet architecture that determines whether families can weather disruption, whether children have stable footing, whether older adults age with support, and whether trust in government grows or erodes.
That framing sits at the center of the keynote I am delivering at the APHSA National Human Services Summit next week (Tuesday, June 16) in Arlington, Virginia. We are at a real crossroads. Human services leaders are operating at the hinge point between policy and lived experience, at a moment of economic strain, technological disruption, and strained public trust. What the work ahead requires is not only technical modernization. It requires narrative courage, design discipline, and a fuller public story about why human services matter.
I’m grateful to APHSA for continuing to create space for these conversations, and to the leaders across this network whose work helped shape American Welfare.
The future of human services, and the future of democracy’s infrastructure, will be built by leaders willing to see systems as design choices, not inevitabilities.
I hope you’ll read the column and join me at the APHSA National Human Services Summit on June 16.
