Career Series - Child Advocacy

This week we will talk about what advocacy work looks like with Morgan Forrester Ray, director of the EarlyWell Initiative at NC Child, and Morgan Wittman Gramann, executive director at North Carolina Alliance for Health. They work to improve the health and well-being of children and families in North Carolina through advocating for early childhood mental health and policies that reduce health disparities, prevent chronic disease, and promote health, respectively.

As the director of NC Child's EarlyWell Initiative, Morgan Forrester Ray works to build a robust, evidence-based, and accessible early childhood mental health system in North Carolina. Prior to her work at NC Child, Ray worked at NCCARE360, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, the N.C. Partnership for Children, and as a case manager/service coordinator for Early Intervention Services. She earned a master's degree in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in social work from the University of Louisville and recently completed a fellowship with Zero to Three.

Morgan Wittman Gramann leads the North Carolina Alliance for Health, which convenes, mobilizes, supports and empowers partners to advance equitable policies that reduce health disparities, prevent chronic disease, and promote health. In addition to her role as executive director, she also serves as one of NCAH's registered lobbyists. Passionate about healthy equity and policy change, Gramann has been an advocate for public health since 2006, when she began advocating for commercial tobacco use prevention and cessation policies. She earned her JD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law and her BA in anthropology from American University in Washington, DC. She is an active member of the North Carolina State Bar.

This speaker series is for Duke students who want to learn more about careers in child and family policy. Meetings are designed to help students explore the wide range of job opportunities and careers available in the field of child and family policy while creating a network of students who share their professional interests.