Amy Rassen is a recognized leader in non-profit management with extensive experience developing and overseeing highly complex non-profit organizations.
Amy is known as a pioneer in the field of family support. As co-founder and chair of national and local organizations she is one of a handful of leaders who have shaped the family support movement in the U.S. She has been instrumental in building national and state systems and enabling nonprofits to implement strategies for organizational sustainability.
For the past 40 years, Amy has pursued her vision of social justice by improving the lives of countless men, women and children. Her work has been recognized by foundation officers, state and county leaders and professional societies, and the many organizations she has helped thrive. She is passionate about ensuring that children, individuals and families lead the best lives possible.
As a VISTA volunteer in Los Angeles and then as a child welfare worker in the St. Louis Missouri Division of Welfare, Amy developed what would become a lifelong commitment to social justice.
She joined San Francisco-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) in 1978, where she founded and operated Parents Place, one of the first comprehensive family resource center for parents and children in the country, replicated in over 200 locations. In 1985, Amy became the Associate Executive Director of JFCS, a position that she held until November 2006. In this position, she oversaw multiple aspects of institutional advancement; designed innovative, replicable, financially sustainable programs; created consumer driven service delivery models, developed operations and accountability systems, raised millions of dollars annually; and developed and implemented outcomes-based quality assurance programs. She received national recognition for creating social enterprises and mission driven businesses, such as care for seniors at home, adoption and conservatorship services and for her visionary research on early intervention services for at-risk children and cost effective approaches to maintaining frail elderly in their own homes.
In 2006 she launched her own consulting business, Rassen and Associates, to enhance the capacity of nonprofit organizations to meet the demands of today and to prepare for tomorrow. Local philanthropists recruited her to start-up a national organization dedicated to helping the 23 million Americans who suffer from asthma. As Executive Director, she worked closely with the founders to plan the direction of the foundation and engaged major donors to support the foundation’s goals. Amy was subsequently hired by the California Health Care Prison Receivership (CHCPR) for her expertise in long-term care and organizational management to help revamp the health care system that served (at that time) 175,000 inmates of California’s 33 adult prisons.
Upon completion of her work with CHCPR, Amy turned her attention toward helping nonprofit agencies throughout the Bay Area in need of capacity building, strategic and business planning, turn-around and/or transition services. Over the past 10 years she has consulted to over 25 non-profit organizations of varying sizes addressing issues of organization development and design, system improvements, effective governance and accountability, while also coaching executive directors.
Two organizations addressed human trafficking. As Senior Advisor to SAGE she testified before the US Civil Rights Commission on “Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children”. She later prepared a “Landscape of Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking” in the Bay Area for The Economic Development & Justice Giving Circle of the Women’s Foundation. Human services, education, health, home care, human trafficking, workforce development and social justice have been the major foci of her practice.
Amy has written a sizable number of reports, strategic and business plans as well as program, operations, employment and finance manuals. Publications and research papers can downloaded from her website (www.rassenassociates.org).
Amy is a licensed clinical social worker with a bachelor’s degree in history from Brandeis University and and a master’s degree in social work from Washington University. She sits on several boards and advisory committees. She is currently on the board of directors of the Northern California Community Loan Fund and Sour Flour and sits on several advisory committees.
The loves of Amy’s life are her husband of 48 years and high school sweetheart, Dr. Joshua Rassen, her children, Jeremy and Elisa, son-in-law Gregory Rassen, and her twin grandchildren, Sylvia and Gabriel Rassen.