Life Experience - Takkeem Morgan

Innovative Tech for Social Good

Data Driven Foster Parent Recruitment & Retention

My primary focus is facilitating coalitions of public and private partners committed to improving outcomes for foster families and the children they support. I’m working with child welfare agencies to develop and manage data driven recruitment and retention campaigns for foster parents. Soon I will be working to leverage private sector innovative technology for social good within the child welfare space. Innovative technologies such as apps, web portals, and virtual reality, to help build community, provide support to foster parents and improve access to world class parenting resources. I hope that you will join me!

Strategic Marketing Consultant

Foster America Fellow
Indiana Department of Child Services

I organized a broad coalition of public and
private stakeholders to support a data-driven
program to help
Indiana recruit & retain foster parents.

1993

Separation

Born and raised in North Philadelphia and attended M. Hall Stanton elementary school, the subject of a 1993 award-winning HBO documentary film “I Am a Promise". The same year the film was made my life took a tragic turn for the worst which included being ripped apart from my family, and my siblings and entering the child welfare system. This is when my 8 year journey began. (my father and I)

1994

Incarceration

One year later a downward spiral resulted in mother’s incarceration, she was just 30 yrs old and ordered to serve a sentence of 5 - 15 years leaving behind five young children. This image was created while my mother was incarcerated. The artist is one of my mother's friends who was also incarcerated. The artist used crayons and a brown paper-bag as the canvass. I'm in the lower middle with the red hat.

1995

Cycles of Neglect

My grandmother (pictured in the middle), with whom we had been placed, pass away after just one year. She died from Cirrhosis of the liver, a disease caused by alcoholism. My grandmother was only 46 years old when she died. I realized early that if I didn't learn to break away from my family's cycles of neglect I could expect my life to run a very similar course.

1996

Big Brother

Following our second kinship placement, my sibling and I were forced to endure yet another tragic separation, but this time was worst of all because now we would be separated from each other, placed into non relative foster care homes. It was much more difficult to be "big brother" during that time.
(My three sibling are shown in this picture)

1997 - 2000

No Where To Go

Between the ages of 14 – 18yrs old I bounced between shelters, group homes and foster homes until I finally "aged out" of the system after getting accepted into Penn State University.

1998

Mentorship

Just when i started to get comfortable with giving up on myself, God sent me a guardian angel named Chip Finney. He was the One. Our relationship relationship begin in the 9th grade while he was my english teacher but Mr. Finney was always more than a teacher. He's the one that first told me that i should develop and work toward a "vision of the future" and i'm glad he did because I later learned that without vision people will perish.

2000

Takkeem Is Going To Make It!

On June 15, 2000 the Philadelphia Daily News proclaimed “Takkeem Morgan is going to make it" in an article they wrote about closing a group home facility where I was living that year. By the time the article was written I had already been accepted into Penn State University. My acceptance into college marked the closing of a long chapter of pain, neglect and hardship. My challenge moving forward was to transform my experience into something positive for myself and others. And with that my next chapter began.

Profissional Experience

Today my mission is to work with others to bring world class innovation and ingenuity into the child welfare ecosystem. I am currently working on using the private sector’s innovative technologies to bring foster parents together to connect, share and grow.

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