Aubrey Edwards-Luce Vice President, Child Welfare and Youth Justice

Aubrey Edwards-Luce is the Vice President of Child Welfare and Youth Justice at First Focus. Before joining First Focus, Aubrey was a senior policy attorney at the DC’s Children’s Law Center (CLC) where she advocated with DC government agencies and the DC Council to improve services and supports children and families involved in the child welfare system, youth who were homeless or at-risk of commercial and sexual exploitation.

Prior to engaging in policy work, Aubrey served as a guardian ad litem attorney at CLC where she directly represented the best interests of children in abuse and neglect, custody, guardianship, and adoption proceedings in D.C. Superior Court. She learned how various human service systems intersect with the child welfare system as she executed her duty to thoroughly investigate her clients’ best interests as it related to permanency, placement, health, and education. Aubrey maintained a small caseload of guardian ad litem cases when she transitioned to policy work, which allowed her to see first-hand how policy translated into practice and to assess whether policy changes were truly making a difference for kids.

Aubrey graduated from Washington University School of Law in 2014. During law school, she worked as a student attorney in two clinics: the Children and Family Advocacy Clinic and the Civil Justice Clinic-Juvenile Rights & Re-Entry Project. Before becoming a lawyer, Aubrey obtained a master’s degree in social work at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work in St. Louis, where she also earned a certificate in violence and injury prevention. During her studies, Aubrey completed practica as an intern victim advocate for survivors of homicide and sexual violence and as an intern in the St. Louis Family Court’s community justice project.

Aubrey also gained three years of primary child abuse prevention experience working at the St. Louis Crisis Nursery. As an intake counselor, she cared for children at risk of abuse and provided neglect and crisis counseling for their parents and guardians. She also worked as the Annual Report Coordinator at the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention for three years.