Thank you to everyone who attended our 29th Annual Leadership Celebration as we honored those who have advanced equity and justice for young people this year.

Shaplaie Brooks

Most recently coming from the BUILD Program at Roxbury Youthworks, Shaplaie has a wealth of experience working with children and families, including over 10 years in the child welfare system serving multiple states. She assisted in writing the Law Enforcement Guidelines for the BPD, and has trained the DA’s office, DCF and other state agencies. Shaplaie is a fervent advocate of serving the marginalized within the marginalized, and has worked with cisgender boys, transgender, and nonbinary youth who were at high risk and or victims of CSEC(Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children). In 2021, Shaplaie Brooks collaborated with the Commission on a report exposing pervasive threats to safety, wellbeing, and permanency faced by LGBTQ youth in the child welfare system and providing critical recommendations to the Department of Children and Families, and in 2022 became the Commission's Executive Director.

Elevated Thought

Elevated Thought is an art and social justice organization based in Lawrence, MA. ET develops spaces for BIPOC youth and communities to engage and understand art's liberating power. Through creative youth development, public art projects, youth organizing, and paid opportunities for artists of color, ET actively addresses forms of systemic injustice. 

Hon. Jay Blitzman

Hon. Jay D. Blitzman, (retired) served as the First Justice of the Massachusetts Middlesex Juvenile Court. Prior to his judicial appointment he was a public defender who was a co-founder and the first director of the Roxbury Youth Advocacy Project, an interdisciplinary public defender’s unit which was the template for the creation of the statewide Massachusetts Youth Advocacy Division. He was also one of the founding members of Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ). Since his judicial retirement, he has consulted for the Sixth Amendment Center (6AC) and served as the interim Executive Director of Massachusetts Advocates for Children. He consults on juvenile, criminal and child welfare issues, mentors attorneys, and holds teaching positions at Harvard Law School (Trial Advocacy), Northeastern Law School (Juvenile Law) and Boston College Law (The Cradle to Prison Pipeline).