Project: The New York Foundling. New York, NY. Implementation Assistant. Fair Future Initiative. Providing services for child welfare.

Omolara O. Fatiregun is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Like many immigrants’ kids, the idea of education as the great equalizer was instilled at an early age and became a fundamental component of her world view. Omolara pursued her own education zealously as a means of transcending her family’s modest financial background and achieving the “American dream.” To that end, Omolara earned a bachelor’s in Sociology and African American Studies from Harvard College, a master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown, and is currently a doctoral candidate in education leadership at Harvard.

While pursuing her education, Omolara fell in love at the intersection of three professional disciplines: youth development, applied research, and philanthropy. Early in her career, Omolara studied the scope and impact of the philanthropic sector at the Urban Institute. She later became vice president at the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation where she led the national implementation and evaluation of the Foundation’s out-of-school time youth development models in partnership with school districts across the country.

As a senior fellow at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Omolara partnered with superintendents and leaders of state child welfare and juvenile justice agencies to scale evidence-based programs to improve outcomes for vulnerable youth. Omolara is proud to have served as a deputy director in DC’s juvenile justice agency where she evaluated investments in education, workforce development, and behavioral health to ensure that court-involved youth had access to high quality rehabilitative programs.

Omolara believes that research-driven approaches and innovations in public systems are integral to improving outcomes for America’s most vulnerable children. To that end, Omolara is a member of Leadership Greater Washington, a community of executives that identifies, examines, and advances solutions to civic issues in the nation’s capital.