Eric Brettschneider

Eric Brettschneider is Acting Commissioner for the NYC Administration for Children's Services. A city and state social service official, Brettschneider created the Child Protective Training Academy, advocated for the avoidance of sibling separation in foster care, and was instrumental in starting minority-controlled child welfare agencies. He served as executive director of Agenda for Children Tomorrow for 18 years, and is the interim senior vice president at the United Way of New York City. His publications include contributions to Making a Leadership Change (1988) and the textbook Educ ation and Psychology (WMC Brown Company Publishers, 1977), as well as Bottom Up Planning in a Top Down World in Devolution (Fordham University Press, 2001).   He is a member of the New York State Governor's Children's Cabinet Advisory Committee; co-chair of the Citizen Review Panel for New York City; chair esperanza of the board of New Yorkers for Children; a trustee of the Viola Bernard Foundation; a trustee on the board of The Fostering Connection; a member of the Child Well-being advisory board of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; and founding president of Jumpstart, New York. Brettschneider serves on the Chief Administrative Judge's Task Force on Interpreters in the Courts. He is the recipient of NYU's Outstanding Teaching Award, a Harvard Law School's Wasserstein Public Interest Fellowship and the Outstanding Alumnus Award by Hofstra University’s Maurice A. Deane Law School Public Justice Foundation.