Celeste Walley is a national youth engagement and child welfare systems leader with more than a decade of experience advancing meaningful youth voice, lived expertise integration, and systems change across child welfare, behavioral health, and residential and community-based services. She currently serves as the Permanency and Youth Engagement Advisor at the California Alliance of Child & Family Services’ Catalyst Center, where she leads statewide youth engagement initiatives, provides training and technical assistance, and develops strategies to strengthen youth-centered practice and continuous quality improvement.
Drawing from both professional expertise and lived experience in foster care, Celeste has worked alongside young people, families, providers, researchers, policymakers, and system leaders to translate lived expertise into improvements in practice, policy, and organizational decision-making. She serves on the Board of the Association of Children’s Residential & Community Services (ACRC), where she co-chairs the Public Policy Committee and the previous chair of the Youth & Family Committee. Celeste is also a strategic advisor to advisory board members for many national organizations across the US.
Celeste is passionate about creating spaces where young people are not simply invited to share their experiences, but are supported to shape the conversations, decisions, and systems that affect their lives. At the International Summit on Therapeutic Residential Care, she will facilitate a youth panel exploring what quality residential care means from the perspectives of young people with lived experience.