2025 Awardees

2025 Promoting Excellence Award Honorees

NACC presents the Promoting Excellence Awards annually to individuals and organizations making significant contributions to the rights and well-being of children and families through excellence in legal representation.

Melissa Colangelo is the Appellate Director at Children’s Law Center in Washington, DC. Since starting at Children’s Law Center in 2011, Melissa has worked tirelessly to improve the course of child welfare law in DC – and increasingly influences appellate practice in our field across the country. The work of Melissa and her team reflects a deep commitment to ensuring that legal decisions about children’s lives are reached with sufficient process and rigor, as well as grounded in evidence instead of assumptions—particularly around mental health, poverty, and race. Melissa is guided by the principle that when you know better, you do better; and she has made it her mission to help courts, lawyers, and systems do just that.

Melissa has been the primary author of nearly 50 appellate pleadings and has led oral arguments—or mentored the attorney making oral arguments—for nearly every appellate case Children’s Law Center has worked on during her tenure. Her practice encompasses everything from last-minute emergency appeals to developing long-term appellate strategies based on new legal theories, and she approaches each case as an opportunity to have a dialogue with judges and ultimately advance the law in ways that improve children’s lives. She has also built a collaborative model that integrates appellate insight into every level of trial strategy, ensuring legal teams have additional tools and support needed to succeed. In 2023, Melissa and her colleagues worked together to overturn their client’s unnecessary removal into stranger foster care, and Melissa successfully convinced DC’s highest court to publish its opinion, thereby establishing DC’s first binding precedent for what evidence is insufficient for the state to justify the harm of removing children from their families. This now serves as a national model.

From growing Children’s Law Center’s appellate team, to developing and delivering trainings nationally, to teaching at George Washington University Law School, Melissa is also a generous mentor and coach for the next generation of child welfare lawyers. She cares deeply about sharing her passion for and knowledge of appellate practice and principles. Her many nominators noted her kindness, strategic thinking, and sharp intellect. As one wrote: “Melissa exemplifies competence, dedication, and zeal for advancing client interests – all done with her trademark warm and approachable demeanor.” Melissa Colangelo embodies the very best of the vital, often-unsung work of appellate law that shapes precedent—and the lives of children—for the better.

Read nomination materials for Melissa Colangelo.

Watch Melissa’s award acceptance remarks.

As an attorney with the Children’s Attorneys Project of Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, Samantha Zabo provides the empathetic and client-centered representation for children that NACC hopes every child welfare lawyer will achieve. Despite carrying a large caseload, Samantha takes the time to build rapport with each client and steadfastly advocates for that child’s expressed wishes. She is a thoughtful attorney who researches best practices to improve her advocacy and who ensures she understands each client’s culture, hopes, and needs before stepping into the courtroom. Samantha does not hesitate to respectfully hold all stakeholders, including the court, accountable to their responsibilities to the child.

Samantha’s personal experience in the foster care system means she truly understands how important it is for the voice of a young person to be heard, and she is driven to help young people beyond an individual case. In addition to her direct representation, Samantha helped establish a youth advisory board to elevate youth voices and improve Nevada’s system. She also works on a team that helps youth and young adults aging out of the system prepare to live independently, and organizes career fairs to help them connect to community and job opportunities. It is a testament to her dedication and skill that Samantha received many nominations from colleagues, supervisors, judges, and even opposing counsel. Some of them said:

“She is wise beyond her years, a leader who commands respect and admiration.”

Samantha “continues to wow us every day not just with her fierce advocacy… but with the causes she has championed and the leadership she has demonstrated so early in her career.”

“The children who Ms. Zabo represents are extremely lucky to have her advocating on their behalf. She does not let anything stop her from putting forth her client’s wishes.”

“She is precisely the kind of lawyer this award was meant to recognize.” NACC agrees!

Read nomination materials for Samantha Zabo.

Watch Samantha’s award acceptance remarks.

Jenna Matthews has focused her legal education and burgeoning legal career on helping survivors of child abuse and neglect. As a law student at Nashville School of Law, and through her work at Dana Looper Law, she provides trauma-informed, client-centered support that focuses on the dignity and agency of the office’s clients. Jenna’s lived experience drives her empathetic approach and her dedication to elevating the voices of young people the system marginalizes.  

Going beyond what is expected of a law student, she volunteers to lead community outreach, and guides the office to a more tailored approach to help find equitable solutions to systemic problems. Jenna is a natural leader who embodies the qualities that NACC hopes to see in the next generation of child welfare lawyers. As Jenna’s nominator wrote: “Her work reflects not just promise, but action—real, sustained action toward a more just and compassionate system for vulnerable children and families…. She brings intelligence, integrity, courage and deep empathy to every facet of her work.” 

Read nomination materials for Jenna Matthews.

Watch Jenna’s award acceptance speech.

The Child Advocacy Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia is a model of client-centered, holistic advocacy for children and families. The Child Advocacy Unit operates on the foundational principle that family integrity is fundamental to the wellbeing of children. The organization’s multidisciplinary teams of attorneys, social workers, and peer advocates reflect a commitment to NACC’s best practices in both trauma-informed representation and also youth engagement. Their work shows that centering the voices of youth improves outcomes for young people and the organization.  

The Child Advocacy Unit also helps improve the system—in the present and the future. It collaborates with sister organizations on vital appellate work, and with Drexel University Law School in a new legal clinic to train the next generation of advocates. The Child Advocacy Unit’s amicus work helps combat racial injustice, including on how termination of parental rights harms Black families.  

As a nominator wrote: “The Child Advocacy Unit shows what a children’s law office can achieve with the right vision, commitment, and community partnerships…. The results are visible in Philadelphia Family Court every day.”  

Read nomination materials for Child Advocacy Unit, Defender Association of Philadelphia.

Watch Mimi Laver’s award acceptance speech.

For three decades, Howard Talenfeld has led efforts to seek justice and improve the child welfare system alongside young people in Florida. As an attorney, he works tirelessly on behalf of young people—particularly those harmed while in foster care, group homes, and institutions. Howard brings energy and care to his legal work, and he was a champion for elevating youth voice long before it was nationally recognized as best practice.

As a leader, he has founded or co-founded multiple organizations advocating for children and their rights. He is the co-founder and lead partner at his law firm’s Justice for Kids Division. Since 2002 Howard has been the founding Board President of Florida’s Children First, which advances the rights of young people and advocates for children’s right to legal counsel. Through his work at Florida’s Children First he helped create Florida Youth SHINE, an organization of lived experience experts working to change the culture of Florida’s child welfare system.

As a policy advocate, Howard has improved Florida’s system in countless ways. He drafted the legislation to create Florida’s first children’s law office pilot project, secured funding to help Legal Aid Service of Broward County create children’s law offices, and wrote Florida’s Foster Children Bill of Rights. Howard led legislative advocacy to help young people with lived experience in the system get stable housing in college and in life. He also led the legislative fight that created mandatory appointment of attorneys for kids with disabilities, children who are medically fragile, and victims of human trafficking. Howard continues to be a champion for high-quality legal representation and the right to counsel in one of the largest states that does not guarantee it to all children. Howard’s many achievements are a shining example of the positive impact a relentless advocate can have on the lives of young people.

As one of his many nominators wrote: “Howard Talenfeld has not only shaped the child welfare landscape in Florida—he has inspired a generation of advocates nationwide to never stop fighting for justice on behalf of our most vulnerable children.”

Another nominator wrote: “Thousands of young people like myself who could have become another statistic instead gained the confidence, leadership skills, and opportunities to pursue their dreams because of Howard’s vision and volunteer efforts – which have produced real results year after year.”

Please join NACC in recognizing Howard Talenfeld for Distinguished Achievement.

Read nomination materials for Howard Talenfeld.

Watch Howard’s award acceptance speech.