Dr. Janet Rosenzweig serves as a Senior Policy Analyst for the Institute for Human Services in Columbus, Ohio and is also a Lecturer at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked for more than four decades focusing on child and family welfare in the public and non-profit sectors.

 

Dr. Rosenzweig earned certification as a sex educator and in 1978 brought that perspective to one of the first child sexual abuse programs in the country, located in east Tennessee. What began as a two-person, 24/7 sex-abuse helpline funded by the first-ever round of CAPTA grants grew to a treatment program serving six counties, a training program serving two federal regions and a research program, all under Rosenzweig’s direction.

 

Rosenzweig moved to Texas, where she was a consultant/trainer for the child protection system while serving as Executive Director of Girls Clubs of Dallas. She then decided to pursue a doctorate at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. While a student, she began her public service in New Jersey by helping to found the state’s first county Commission on Child Abuse; in 1988 she helped craft one of the first protocols for multi-disciplinary child abuse investigations. She then served as that County’s cabinet-level Human Services Director, managing divisions on mental health, addictions, disabilities, youth services, The Office on Aging, the County Library System, and the County Juvenile Detention Center. This broad perspective informed her teaching of graduate students at Rider University, Temple University, Montclair State University and now at The University of Pennsylvania.

 

Dr. Rosenzweig moved to statewide service by joining Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey as Executive Director from 2001 - 2007. She more than doubled the size and scope of the agency.

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After obtaining a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2008, Dr. Rosenzweig drew on her experiences as a sex educator working with child abuse to write The Sex-Wise Parent: The Parent's Guide Protecting Your Child, Strengthening Your Family, and Talking to Kids about Sex, Abuse, and Bullying, (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012).

Dr. Rosenzweig continued this national focus as Vice President for Research and Programs at Prevent Child Abuse America, managing a national resource center for sex abuse prevention and working closely with the national expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs. She was then invited to serve The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) as Executive Director, a position she held until 2021.

 

Comfortable being called a ‘policy-wonk’ Janet has recently had to come to terms with her inner statistics-geek, admitting the pleasure she takes from developing regression models. When not working, she also enjoys yoga, astrology and traveling in Italy, where she enjoys great wine, food, and friends.

 

 

Education: 

BS       Individual and Family Services, The Pennsylvania State University

MS      Health Education, The Pennsylvania State University

PhD     Social Work and Public Administration, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

MPA   Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government