For our final episode of season 1, meet CEO of Covenant House International, Bill Bedrossian. Listen as he and Gioia discuss how his passion for ending youth homelessness has evolved and what’s driven him towards his current role, as he encourages listeners to engage in the work that each Covenant House site implements.

https://www.covenanthouse.org
Instagram: @Bill_Bedrossian

Prior to his role as CEO of Covenant House International, Bill served as the CEO of Covenant House California since 2014, leading the site to quadruple in size in those eight years. Bill’s passion for working with youth came from his parents, who have been foster parents for over 30 years and have adopted 8 of his 11 siblings through the child welfare system.

Bill began his career doing street outreach, residential care, and therapy in Chicago in the 90s. He then spent 13 years with the L.A. County Department of Child and Family Services, leaving in 2008 as the agency’s regional director of South County, where he helped reduce the number of children in out-of-home-care by close to 75%. In 2010, Bill became the executive director at Olive Crest’s Southern CA operations overseeing the agency’s foster care, adoption, group home, transitional living, mental health services, and family support operations.

“I am so humbled and honored to be able to continue to serve our youth in this new capacity,” said Bedrossian. “While we continue to develop and deepen our continuum of direct care for young people overcoming homelessness and trafficking, Covenant House is thinking a lot about how we can get further upstream so that we can change laws, policies, and practices that lead to youth and young families becoming homeless in the first place. We are thinking about how we can be part of increasing wages and developing careers for our youth that will enable them to live independently; as well as how to make an impact on affordable housing across the Americas, so that our youth can have places where they can actually afford to live. We have a lot of important work ahead of us, and I am so grateful to be coming into such a committed and skilled group of people."

Bedrossian has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Finance from Taylor University and a Masters of Social Work degree from Loyola University in Chicago; he also served as an adjunct professor in USC’s Graduate School of Social Work from 2012 to 2017. Since 2018, Bill has served on the Los Angeles County Commission of Children and Families to help provide oversight of the country’s largest child welfare system. With a shared passion for helping young people, Bill’s wife Jen is the founder and owner of UNCVRD Jewelry, which she started to raise awareness and funding for the fight against human trafficking in her hometown of Long Beach, CA and beyond. Bill enjoys coaching the baseball and basketball teams of his two young sons, Jarius and Julius, and rooting for any sports team from his hometown of Philadelphia.

Red Bean Baby talks about a lot of difficult, potentially triggering things. Take care of yourself and your mental health. Learn about more resources here on our website (https://www.covenanthousenola.org/issues/mental-health-wellness/).

Dr. Corine Brown, or Dr. C’Ma, a social worker and friend of Covenant House, can help you access more resources. Meet Dr. C’Ma here: https://themindbodyservicecollective.com/

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