Shannon Schumacher is the president and CEO of The Villages,Indiana’s largest nonprofit child and family services agency. The Villages serves more than 3,100 children and their families every day through an array of services, making it a model for everything from foster family support to older youth services.

The organization has a special role in the Indiana care community because it fills critical gaps for foster families that the government can’t or is unable to handle, such as kinship care and family preservation.

Shannon has been an influential figure who has spearheaded these diverse services that helped widen support for foster families in Indiana. That’s why we proudly call her one of our #HeroesOfFosterCare. In this episode, she explains how The Villages supports families, supplements government services, and how engagement is crucial for older youth services.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• The Villages of Indiana

More on Shannon Shumacher

Shannon has over 25 years of experience creating and expanding social services for families, most recently as the Executive Vice President of Strategy, Innovation, and Clinical Services at Volunteers of America where she worked for 18 years.

She is a Licensed Social Worker, Licensed Counselor, and received her master’s degree in Social Work from Indiana University. She completed a 2-year non-profit Executive Development Program at the University of Notre Dame, Mendoza School of Business and an Executive Leadership Program from American Express™.

She is a member of the Ball State University Department of Social Work’s Advisory Board, the Healthy Families Indiana Think Tank, and the Indiana Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaboration.

She was a recipient of the Hero of Recovery Award from Mental Health America of Indiana in 2018 and the Community Service Award from Drug Free Marion County in 2013.

She is life-long Hoosier who grew up in rural Indiana and lives in Indianapolis with her husband and teenage son. She enjoys traveling, hiking, and running.

More on Takkeem Morgan

I work with child welfare agencies to develop and manage data-driven recruitment and retention campaigns for foster parents.

My mission is to work with others to bring world-class innovation and ingenuity into the child welfare ecosystem.

I'm currently working on using the private sector’s innovative technologies to bring foster parents together to connect, share and grow.

For more on me, visit takkeemmorgan.com.

The Mosaic Foster Parents Café podcast is produced by Zuri Berry (@ZMCPodcasts).