Our Team

The National Safe Place Network (NSPN) team has a combined history of more than 175 years of direct service at local non-profit agencies serving youth and families in crisis. This experience includes designing, implementing, and evaluating programs at local, state, regional, and national levels.

The NSPN skill and knowledge base is as diverse as the hundreds of NSPN affiliates across the country. Our teams brings expertise in residential and non-residential programming, clinical interventions, suicide awareness and prevention, human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children prevention, domestic violence programming, marketing and branding, trauma-informed care, positive youth development, federal funding and monitoring, and even more.

To complement the NSPN team, the network support a broad array of subject matter experts who bring additional history and knowledge to helping the network move toward the eventual realization of our vision of a world where all youth are safe.

Meet the President/CEO, Laurie Jackson
Email: [email protected]

Laurie Jackson is the President/CEO for National Safe Place Network. She joined the organization in June 2010 and has been active with the Safe Place program for more than 15 years. She served as Associate Executive Director for Synergy Services, Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri. Jackson was with Synergy Services for 19 years and prior to that she worked for several years with Cedars Youth Services in Lincoln, Nebraska. She has been active with local, regional, state and national efforts in the areas of runaway and homeless youth, child welfare and domestic violence. 

Jackson holds an Executive Master's Degree in Business Administration from the University of Missouri Kansas City and a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work from the University of Nebraska Kearney. She serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the National Network for Youth and is dedicated to bringing awareness to the issues of runaway and homeless youth.

Listed left to right / back to front: Laurie Jackson, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Rachel Hurst, Tammy Hopper, Mark Wolf, Sherry Casey, Susan Harmon, Shauna Brooks, April Carthorn, Autumn Sandlin, Kim Frierson, Eric Tadatada, Hillary Ladig