Executive Director
Aubrey Edwards-Luce (she/her/hers) is a zealous advocate for children, youth, and families who is deeply committed to co-creating anti-racist solutions with people who are most harmed by social and legal systems. Aubrey joined the Center for Families, Children and Courts (CFCC) as the Executive Director in July 2023. Previously, she was Vice President of Child Welfare and Youth Justice at First Focus on Children.
Aubrey has over 15 years of experience working with and alongside children and families who were at-risk or were already court-involved from varied vantage points. She has worked in an informal juvenile court supervisions program, a restorative justice-based neighborhood accountability program for youth, a victim’s services office, and as a guardian ad litem attorney for children in abuse and neglect proceedings. Throughout her experiences, Aubrey has witnessed family courts wield the power to change the trajectory of children’s lives and has worked to ensure that children and families have access to resources and community-based resources before they are entangled in the court system.
In addition to bringing to CFCC her skills in coalition building, fundraising, advocacy, and strategic planning, Aubrey also connects the Center with the Child Welfare and Race Equity Collaborative, a coalition she launched in 2020. The coalition brings together federal policy strategists and lived-experience experts from across the country who are focused on transforming the child welfare system into an anti-racist system that supports providing children and families with the freedom to thrive in their homes and communities.
Before she graduated from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, Aubrey completed her master’s degree in social work and bachelor’s degree in philosophy and psychology, also at Washington University in St. Louis. She gained primary child abuse prevention experience while working at the St. Louis Crisis Nursery. There, she cared for children at risk of abuse and neglect and provided crisis counseling for their parents and guardians. She also worked at the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.
Before joining First Focus on Children, Aubrey was a senior policy attorney at the Children’s Law Center (CLC) in Washington, D.C. Prior to engaging in policy work, she served as a guardian ad litem attorney at CLC where she represented the best interests of children in abuse and neglect, custody, guardianship, and adoption proceedings in D.C. Superior Court.
Aubrey lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland with her husband, cat, toddler daughter and teenaged ahijada (“goddaughter”) on land that is the unceded territory of the Piscataway tribe.