This story was originally published by The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Sign up for The Imprint’s free newsletters here.
Osahon Akpata-Tanious, the new executive director of the foremost advocacy group for foster youth in Minnesota, sat down with The Imprint recently to discuss her work since joining the organization in late September.
In conversations and emails, Akpata-Tanious described Foster Advocates’ approach, which is to ensure that current and former foster youth “lead the entire process, to determine step-by-step solutions, define their own outcomes, and hold decision-makers accountable.” The role of staff, she added, is “not about us deciding what the agenda should be, but about building partnerships, securing funding, and providing tools so that Fosters can set and achieve their own goals.”
Among the key issues Akpata-Tanious is focused on — identified in a far-reaching report produced by her nonprofit — is the urgent need to tackle housing insecurity and homelessness.
In June, Foster Advocates released sobering findings in its MN Promise Report: Half of the current and former foster youth interviewed by the group’s researchers said they had been homeless in the recent past. In Hennepin County, 80% of transition-aged foster youth said they had been homeless by age 24.
Akpata-Tanious — whose academic and professional background includes finances and public service — has known instability herself. Growing up, she spent time in foster care before being reunited with her mother, and had an active case in the child welfare system in New York City until she turned 18.
She and her mother stayed in multiple homeless shelters while she was in high school. They got news they’d been waiting for in her senior year: They had received benefits through the New York City Housing Authority.
“I missed prom — but it was for good reasons — because we got a call that we finally got permanent housing,” she said. “I was so excited that I would be able to have permanent housing going into college.”
After completing undergraduate studies at City College of New York’s Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, Akpata-Tanious later moved to Minneapolis, where she pursued her master’s degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and earned a disability policy and services certification from the university’s College of Education and Human Development. In her previous role, she worked as a budget and evaluation analyst for the City of Minneapolis.
For five years prior, Akpata-Tanious served in several financial analyst and portfolio management roles with Wells Fargo, from technology and venture banking to health care, higher education, and nonprofit banking. That background has assisted in her new role overseeing Foster Advocates’ more than $1 million budget.
Akpata-Tanious took over from interim executive director Ariana Chamoun, now the group’s director of systems change. Former executive director Nikki Beasley left the organization last year.
Since its founding in 2018, the organization that refers to the individuals it works with as “Fosters” has successfully lobbied for Gov. Tim Walz to hire the state’s first-ever ombudsperson for foster youth and a law providing current and former foster youth with tuition-free college education. Other legislative wins have focused on limiting disruptions to foster children’s K-12 education and allowing foster youth to speak privately to child welfare investigators.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What attracted you to this position at Foster Advocates, and do you consider this a pivot in your career?
Pivot in my career — but a true continuation of my life passions.
My trajectory a few months ago was me being a CFO of a city or a county or a state — bringing that Foster-informed, disability advocacy lens, and all the other hats that I hold, to that position. Whereas someone who may not be as well-intentioned would usually be in that decision-making seat.
Lived experience attracted me to this position. I was like: If not now, then when?
Foster Advocates’ Minnesota Promise Report was released this summer and included an expansive list of problems facing current and former foster youth alongside potential solutions. What stood out to you most from that report and what do you plan on prioritizing from that report going forward?
What stood out to me initially was all the disclaimers in the beginning. Reading it may be triggering for some people. I give a lot of kudos to the Fosters who lent their voice to the Minnesota Promise Report.
I went word by word, scanned line by line. My marked-up version of the report could be another report of itself. But that was another draw for me, how expansive the Minnesota Promise report is, because this is the first rendition — there are so many other sections that were not included.
Would you be able to share more about your time in foster care?
I was in the foster care system in New York. I was in care for approximately four years. I had an active child welfare case until I turned 18. I think I entered the system for multiple reasons, including xenophobia, racism, poverty, ableism.
If it’s not obvious by my name, both my parents are not from this country, and I think some of those practices that are culturally specific and normal to people from those backgrounds, to a Western definition of what social welfare can be conflated as something it’s not. (Akpata-Tanious was born in Chicago to a Nigerian mother and an Egyptian father).
Foster Advocates has focused on increasing access to college. What were your college experiences like?
If not for the Bottom Line program in New York, I would not have gotten into college, and I probably would not have finished college. And then there’s the SEEK program at the City University of New York. Because I was low-income, because I was first-generation, I was eligible for these programs. That’s a really big point of passion for me, that we have that education focus at Foster Advocates.
Sometimes, it’s not until you get to some college-level classes where you’re learning about policy, or you touch it in one class, and you’re like, ‘oh, I want to learn a little bit more about that.’ And then you learn the language of policy and learn the language of advocacy to kind of paint the picture of what you’ve gone through.
At the University of Minnesota, I was able to find groups of other first-generation master’s students, like the Black Graduate Collective. Being able to find those spaces — and them being welcoming and open to the breadth of experience that I bring from what I’ve been through in different parts of my lived experience — allowed me to find comfortable spaces on campus.
Can you tell me more about how your background in foster care shaped your experience in college and graduate school?
I would be surprised if other Fosters don’t feel this way, too. But I often found myself sometimes stumping other students in the classrooms, or professors, when it comes to their definitions of systems.
Until you actually live and are operating as a chess piece in a system when you’re reading these textbooks, and that’s your only definition of a system, you’re missing the gaps. You’re missing the actual implementation. You’re missing how policies are sometimes written so obscurely and at such a blanket level that when they’re actually applied, they’re not applied the same way across the board.
You describe “participatory policymaking” as one of your interests. Can you tell me more about how that works?
We have ideas. We have things we can act on. But nothing at Foster Advocates happens without the sign-off of Fosters and community — and that is participatory policymaking. What Foster Advocates has done in the past is we have policy agendas that come up on an annual basis, and those are signed off by community members as well.
So, continuing that, and expanding that, even if the scope of what they’re doing with us is not necessarily a direct line to legislative change.
We’ve read that you are a pet lover when you’re not at work. Can you tell me more?
So, Oscar is a southern pup. He’s from North Carolina, so moved him up here. And he loves the snow. Surprisingly, I remember the first day he saw the snow, and he just, like, paused.
My partner introduced the reptiles into my life. I didn’t grow up as a ‘reptile girly’ in Harlem, New York, but he brought that into my life. They’re just beautiful parts of nature that we’ve been able to take care of in our home.
