Keiana West

Keiana West is a Government Innovation Fellow on the Children & Families team working on the GPL’s 40 to 50 Kinship Initiative. In this role, she supports child welfare practitioners in designing and implementing strategies to increase and sustain kin placements for children in out-of-home care. She previously worked with Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services to leverage its mobile response program to reduce unnecessary hospital contact for youth experiencing mental health crises.

Prior to joining the GPL, Keiana worked at the Center for Policing Equity where she supported local governments in strengthening community-led public safety solutions, including community violence intervention and 911 diversion to alternative response programs. She also worked as a Fellow at the Equal Justice Initiative, where she built community coalitions to memorialize and address historical racial injustice across the U.S., and served as a Princeton in Africa Fellow implementing a monitoring and evaluation framework at an education nonprofit in South Africa.

Keiana holds an MPA from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, as well as a BA in Psychology and a concentration in Africana Studies from Williams College. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, exploring different fitness classes, playing cards and games, and experimenting in the kitchen.