Clark Peters, PhD, MSW, JD, is an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Social Work, focusing his work primarily on adolescents in state care. He is also is a Policy Fellow at the Institute of Public Policy and holds a courtesy appointment at the University of Missouri School of Law. As a civil rights attorney he represented youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. He has presented, taught, and written on issues of juvenile justice, foster care, and child welfare in the US and abroad. He is co-founder of the Center for Criminal and Juvenile Justice and policy fellow at the Missouri Prevention Science Institute. His time as an Interdisciplinary Research Leader fellow connected him with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and its effort to build a culture of health in our society. Having led the University of Missouri's faculty council for two years, he gained insight into the barriers that keep academic research from being shared meaningfully with the communities universities purport to serve. He is the co-founder of the Faculty Engagement Initiative, which seeks to challenge these barriers.