Sarah Forrest is a Project Leader on the Children & Families team, overseeing efforts to strengthen access to youth mental health services. As a Fellow at the GPL, Sarah worked with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, where she helped the state uncover promising opportunities to meet youth mental health needs earlier, before crises arise.
Prior to joining the GPL, Sarah worked for over a decade in nonprofit and government agencies to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families impacted by the child welfare and youth justice systems in the state of Nebraska. Sarah’s experience includes providing policy research and advocacy, oversight and evaluation, and training and technical assistance to child-serving systems on an array of topics, including responding to sexual abuse and exploitation, reducing the use of punitive and ineffective interventions, and improving connections to meaningful services. She earned a Master of Public Administration degree with a concentration in health and social policy from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and also holds a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Sarah lives with her husband and two children in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where you can find her biking around town and eating pastries from local bakeries and her own kitchen.