Elizabeth Wendel

Elizabeth Wendel, MSW, LSW is the president and co-founder of Pale Blue, a collaboration that seeks to disseminate learning and participatory methods at the intersection of Equality, Economics, and the Environment for the foundation of human health, flourishing, and justice. Pale Blue. honors the relational capability for justice and equity for each of us on this pale blue planet we call home.  

Elizabeth is an accomplished expert and author in the frameworks of Family FindingTM and Family SeeingTM, dedicating her career to justice doing side by side with young, people, parents and families. Her work began in Philadelphia, where she established the Family Finding program and provided services to over 10,000 young people, connecting them with over 26,000 supportive kinship and relational connections. Her impact extends to families across the United States as well as Australia, Romania, Mexico, Colombia, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast

Elizabeth holds a Master's in Social Work from Temple University. During her time in graduate school, she worked in Philadelphia's only Family Finding program and with teen parents, where she devised a family networking model. Her experience as an end-of-life grief counselor in hospice gave her valuable insights into the impact of social environment on human relationships and the human condition. 

Elizabeth possesses a comprehensive understanding of organizational culture and how it affects the success, morale, and learning of an organization. She has created tools to tackle "model fatigue" in large-group learning and has extensive experience in organizational culture, funding strategies, capacity building, facilitation, trauma-informed practices, and long-term support for youth in care. She is also a certified trauma-informed care expert. 

Elizabeth serves as a senior advisor to two of the largest healthcare companies in the United States, provides advisory partnership to government and private organizations in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Her areas of expertise include strategic design, policy framing, practice model development, Family FindingTM, Family SeeingTM, and work in children and adult mental health systems. Beginning 2020, Pale Blue. and the Kemp Center at the University of Denver, created the Truth Telling in Child Welfare collaborative, which is spreading across the United States, allowing young people, parents, relatives, and Tribes to share their testimony and post-traumatic wisdom about the harms of family separation and policing as a proxy for child safety in America.  

Elizabeth is a published author and continues to write with focus in economic justice, health and human wellbeing. "Imaginative thoughts ignite the spark, but only gain strength with the beating of hearts together. Each day, the next, and the one after that, a consistent pursuit of action sets change in motion."