Bonnie takes a vision and makes it a reality through comprehensive strategy and program development. She is a compassionate leader who inspires innovative action while being grounded in financial and quality assurance.
As the Director of Programs at Extraordinary Families, she co-managed a $4 million budget, and led strategic planning and annual audits, consistently achieving excellent compliance. She directed agency-wide diversity and inclusion initiatives, earning the agency recognition as a “leader” for three consecutive years and “innovator” for another four years by the Human Rights Campaign All Children All Families Project. She also led a major strategic shift to transform the agency’s focus on child welfare and protection programs toward family preservation and a systemic approach that supports holistic healing for children and families. With that, she launched a Family Resource Center program and supported the successful merger between Extraordinary Families and Allies for Every Child, where she continues to oversee the organization’s foster care, adoption, and transition-age-youth programs.
Her career in child welfare was inspired in part by her early work as a volunteer Domestic Violence Crisis Intervention Counselor, but also by her family’s lived experience. Her grandfather was raised in an orphanage without ever experiencing a forever family; her father was informally adopted, suffered abuse, and ran away as a teenager, transitioning prematurely into an uncertain adulthood; and her mother helped raise her younger siblings after their mother became bedridden due to cancer. With these challenging experiences so intimately woven into her family’s history – shaping her upbringing and indelibly informing her perspective – Bonnie’s personal mission from early adulthood has been to help vulnerable children and families heal and thrive.
Bonnie is a proud first-generation college graduate. She is a licensed clinical social worker with an MSW and a BA in Psychology from California State University, Chico. She serves as a recurring guest speaker for Gays with Kids, sharing her expertise on foster care, adoption, and growing your family through fostering and adoption.
