Christine Brambila is the Senior Program Officer of Mental Health at the Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation. An exceptional leader passionate about collaboration, cross-systems efforts, and children’s well-being, with over 10 years’ experience in children’s mental health, capacity-building, and public policy. Her direct service experience began with reuniting unaccompanied minors with family members, and working with pregnant and parenting youth in care. Realizing that antiquated systems were holding youth and adolescents to unrealistic expectations with little to no social supports, something had to change. Christine transitioned to working in public policy to understand advocacy, the power in community voice, and forging ahead to create change through collective efforts. In her most recent role, Christine served as the Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Manager at the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development, managing a portfolio of $3.2 million amongst cross-sector partners committed to meaningful impact within Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation practices, and significantly growing the Consultation workforce.
In addition, she facilitated State leadership conversations advancing policies associated with early childhood mental health, trainings, and systems of care. Lastly, Christine leveraged her voice and actions to elevate the importance of diversifying the mental health workforce, not only statewide, but nationally as well.
Christine’s children’s mental health experience, her understanding of how policy impacts systems of care, and her commitment to equity inform her approach to relationship-building. Working together, we can innovate, elevate family and community voice to promote children’s well-being to ensure that all children can grow up healthy. Christine is a proud graduate of the University of Chicago – Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice with a Master of Arts Degree, a Fellow of BUILD’s Equity Leaders Action Network, and a former Illinois Early Childhood Fellow of Erikson Institute at the Latino Policy Forum. She is a proud mom of her blended family of two children, a mellow dog named Canelo. She enjoys baking with her kids and playing softball with her husband during the warmer months in Chicago.