Bryn Fortune has a daughter who was born 38 years ago with significant health challenges and as a result spent half of the first five years of her daughter’s life living inside an inner-city children’s hospital. Over those five years, most of Bryn’s daughter’s roommates where children who were black and lived in Detroit. Bryn was shocked how differently she was treated and her experience of what it meant to have white privilege. Her sense of the injustices she witnessed along with her own family’s experiences led her to her own origins as a volunteer parent leader which overtime turned into a career. Bryn has extensive experience in parent leadership, community organizing, facilitation, strategic planning, and the development towards the readiness required for both parents and professionals to become authentic partners. Bryn has the “lived experience and expertise” for building parent leadership systems in a variety of approaches at the community, state and national levels. Through these efforts Bryn has consistently had a proven track record over many years for bringing together diverse partners and the development of parent leaders on this pilgrimage.

Her most recent past work includes:

• Facilitating a statewide learning community focused on parent leadership within Michigan’s Home Visiting System
• Parent leadership coaching in the Home Visiting Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network (CoIIN) to 11 states and territories with Local Implementing Agencies for their quality improvement efforts
• Consultant and coach for the Reach Out and Read National Office to develop parent leadership approaches within the system
• Co-designer with the Center for the Study of Social Policy for the Early Relational Health Family Network Collaborative
• Co-author “CoIIN Parent Leadership Toolkit” with the Education Development Center (EDC)
• Parent Leadership coaching with the Pritzker 0-3 states at the May BUILD regional conference.
• Led the development of the three-webinar series and set of handouts on parent leadership at the 2021 Home Visiting Summit
• Led the production of the publication, “STEPPING UP AND SPEAKING OUT: Michigan’s Journey in Parent Leadership”.