Maggie Lin

Executive Director & Co-Founder

maggie@fosternation.org

Maggie Lin grew up in the foster care system in Los Angeles County from age 10 to emancipation at age18. Her childhood was fraught with abuse and neglect as she was born to a young mother, and her father was murdered when she was 2 years old. In her time with the system, she moved through6different placements, while her younger sister moved through9placements. In her last foster home, she had an incredible mentor that helped her realize she had high potential and was capable of attending college. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Dartmouth College in 2011.

Since graduation, she has worked with Nobel Laureate Dr. Rajendra Pachauri at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (United Nations) and ended up living in India for nearly 4 years with that role. She has also worked as a Dartmouth Fellowfor a software technology company fighting counterfeitdrugsin Southeast Asia, as well as director of strategic partnerships for other technology startupsinLos Angeles. Her experience overseas brought her back to Los Angeles, where she worked at CreativeArtists Agency (CAA) for a short stint in the Foundation department. This was when she was introduced to Jeanne Pritzker (Pritzker Foster Care Initiative), who empowered her to use her life experiences to shed light on those still struggling in the system.

The mission of Foster Nation is to support and empower foster youth aging out of the system to become self-sufficient adults. Maggie helped to co-found Foster Nation with the goal of engaging and rallying millennials to support and care for their peers with lived experience in the system. Since inception, she has led a Collective of 15 to 30 members every year–made up of professionals who are committed to making a difference in the foster care landscape.

She has worked as a strategy consultant with other nonprofits and social impact companies in Los Angeles including Beauty Bus, Kara Love Project, Vie, and Arixa Capital. Maggie has spoken on various foster youth higher education convenings and panels, and she personally mentors foster youth interns and volunteers.

Chloe Kinman

Program Manager

chloe@fosternation.org

Prior to joining the Foster Nation team, Chloe worked in various international and national non profits, community-based organizations and municipal settings, to advocate for vulnerable populations. She received her Master of Social Welfare (MSW) degree from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, where she developed key skills in clinical and community social work practice, program development, policy analysis and project management.

Upon receiving her MSW, Chloe worked for the City of Santa Monica managing the City’s HumanServices Outcomes Measurement project where she oversaw the efforts of collecting the most relevant data to improve programs for vulnerable individuals throughout Santa Monica. Chloe worked with a variety of key stakeholders including housing providers, school-districts, community-based organizations, health-care facilities and public agencies. In addition, she worked in partnership with theOffice of Communications to develop an entire strategic communications plan to ensure successful community engagement and that the needs of vulnerable populations — particularly our unhoused neighbors — were met.

She has also worked as a Project Consultant for the Corporation for Supportive Housing’s (CSH) SpeakUp! Advocacy program, to support and equip individuals with lived experience of homelessness to use their expertise to positively impact local and national conversations around housing and services.

Through her work, Chloe witnessed first-hand the cross intersectionality between the child welfare and housing system which led her to currently sit on Foster Nation’s Young Leaders Collective Board, where she has had the opportunity to advocate for transitional-age foster youth and connect them to resources and supportive services. Chloe now manages special programs and development for FosterNation.

Caroline Kunitz

President

carolinekunitz@me.com

Caroline has nearly two decades of non-profit experience and looks forward to using that knowledge to help foster youth. She founded LA Diaper Drive and grew it to become the nation’s largest diaper bank before merging with Jessica Seinfeld’s charity. She is the winner of Social Venture Partner Los Angeles’ prestigious Social Innovation Fast Pitch and Investee competitions, and has a BA from UCLA, MBA from Richmond College, and MPP from USC. She currently leads a unique networking workshop and speaker series she created for women non-profit leaders in LA.

David Milken

Treasurer

dmilken@rmecapital.com

David comes with years of experience in the finance and investment industry. As a financial entrepreneur and business owner, he knows he will be able to help Foster Nation with its budgeting and projections, cleaning and organizing of data and how to best interpret that data and general duties as Treasurer of the Board. He also plans to assist with various fundraising activities.

Aaron Elster

Director

elsterster@gmail.com

Aaron has a background in teaching and law. His specialty consists of compliance and contract reviews. Aaron has spent most of his time working in criminal justice, housing justice and helping renewable energy developers deliver enough solar and wind to power over 1 million homes each year.

Dave Herman

Director

Dh.herman@gmail.com

Dave Herman is USC Ph.D. in computational neuroscience that has applied his technical knowledge in the tech industry for the last 10 years. As a founder, advisor, CTO/CDO, and head of data science, dave has lead early-stage data-driven products for over 30 companies, across numerous industries including, habits change (Boundless.ai), fintech (Happymoney), psychometrics (psyml.co), and mass-scale IOT (Bird scooter). Dave believes in a future where symbiotic merging of our minds and machines can lead to technologies that go beyond merely"delighting us" but help us become what we strive to be.