Team Members

Annette D. Greene

Sr. Associate

Annette brings her professional experience from the public and private sector to the firm. She earned her undergraduate degree in Speech Pathology and graduate degree in Social Work from the University of Houston – Central Campus in 1983 and 1996 (respectively). She was certified as an Ordained Minister through the International Congregation of Spiritual Healers and Earth Stewards (SHES) in 2003.

Annette has over 20 years of experience in all aspects of Child Welfare from frontline abuse/neglect investigation casework to intensive in-home family reunification casework. Nearly 10 of these years were in foster care and adoption which included training and licensing foster and adoptive homes, ongoing supervision of foster and adoptive homes, and the placement of children. She was the local executive director for a national non-profit minority adoption recruitment organization in Houston (One Church One Child) for which she later became the national program director. As the local director, Annette served as a link between three Texas Department of Protective & Regulatory Services (TDPRS) foster/adoption caseworkers and their supervisor and the OCOC program. Much of her responsibilities centered on the recruitment of local churches to support the program, making ongoing church and other public presentations in an effort to recruit prospective adoptive families and individuals, fundraising and grant writing.

As the national program director, Annette coordinated all communications between OCOC programs across the nation, provided technical assistance to all OCOC programs nationwide, assisted in grant writing to obtain government and private sector funding, served as a liaison between NOCOC and other social service agencies, built relationships between NOCOC and members of the US Congress as well as local elected officials in various states, planned national conferences, designed and implemented developmental and preventative program services that help strengthen and empower multicultural and socially diverse children, young adults and families and helped to establish a minority licensed child-placing agency in Texas.

She also worked with the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), the HBCU Substance Abuse Consortium and Howard University to sponsor national conferences for students in HBCUs across the country. The goals of these annual conferences were to: 1) provide a forum for the exchange of cutting edge knowledge of substance abuse treatment, prevention, research and education; 2) increase awareness among HBCUs of disparities in treatment, services and research for minority students in substance abuse; 3) promote majors in fields related to mental health and substance abuse treatment, prevention and research among minority students; and 4) create a dialog for HBCU students to network with their peers and experts in the field of mental health and substance abuse.

Annette is a certified trainer in the MAPP and PRIDE foster/adoption parenting curriculums and has created workshops and seminars on such topics as parenting, teen suicide, women’s issues, and effectively setting and achieving goals. Because of her love for children and belief in the human spirit, Annette worked for nearly 15 years as a counselor for youth and their families involved with the juvenile justice system and four years as a therapist for an in-patient and partial hospitalization drug and alcohol prevention organization.

She served on the Houston Child Abuse Task Force, the Texas Legislative Steering Committee for Minority Adoptions, the National One Church One Child Advisory Board – entities that help prevent child abuse and promote minority adoptions. As an active member of the MANATAKA American Indian Council, Annette is a member of the web-based Counseling Assistance Committee and provides free spiritual counseling service to its members and guests via email.

Annette is a published author of two books – Soothing the Heart (which features some of her own landscape photography and America’s Black Self-Made Millionaires & Their Secrets to Success; and a journal article in the premiere journal for the field of Social Work named Social Work, and has published articles in local and national magazines and newsletters (i.e., Black Business Houston Magazine; PROMISE Magazine; The Association of Black Social Workers – Houston Chapter Newsletter. She served as lead editor for Black Business Houston Magazine for three years and co-editor for the Association of Black Social Workers – Houston Chapter Newsletter for 10 years