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The Hon. Nancy Sidote Salyers, Co-Director

Mark Testa, Co-Director


The Hon. Nancy Sidote Salyers
Co-Director, Fostering Results
Judge Nancy Sidote Salyers has spent a 25-year legal career working on behalf of children and families, including serving as Presiding Judge of the Cook County Juvenile Court's Child Protection Division, which was widely regarded as a model court for collaborations forged with agencies, academics, child advocates and the community. Through reforms launched during Salyers' tenure, for the first time in the one hundred year history of the court, more child cases were closed than opened on a consistent basis, significantly decreasing previous backlogs. Judge Salyers has been recognized nationally for her work, including awards from the White House, the National Child Support Enforcement Association, The National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators and the National Court Appointed Special Advocates Association. Judge Salyers holds Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts degrees from Dominican University (Rosary College), where she graduated Cum Laude, and earned her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law.

Mark Testa
Principal Investigator, Fostering Results
Mark Testa is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Director of the Children and Family Research Center. He formerly served as Research Director for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), where his research was instrumental in policy innovations leading to better services for children and families. Professor Testa has been recognized nationally for his work in child welfare, including the Adoption 2002 Excellence Award for Applied Scholarship and Research on kinship care and permanence. Recent publications include: "The Social Ecology of Child Endangerment (with Frank Furstenberg) in A Century of Juvenile Justice, "The Gift of Kinship Foster Care" in Children and Youth Services Review, and "Subsidized Guardianship: Testing an Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come" in Social Work Research.