Karny Stefan, chief executive officer of Walden Family Services, started her current position in October 2006. Before Walden, Stefan spent 15 years working with homeless and underserved youth in the Phoenix and San Diego areas. As chief executive of Walden, Stefan develops programming, raises funds and plans the organization’s future direction.

Walden Family Services was founded in 1976 and serves the unmet needs of the most critical foster children in Southern California, such as those living with HIV/AIDS and cancer, and those who have experienced sexual abuse or have been severely neglected. Walden also provides help to marginalized youth including GLBT foster youth. One of Walden’s main goals, Stefan said, is “to support the lives of children and families through lasting relationships.”

Walden accomplishes this goal, Stefan said, by providing a number of different services and programs to support foster children and their families. Walden provides extensive training to foster families about how to deal with the multiple challenges of raising a foster child. Walden also provides foster children with mental health services, housing assistance, scholarships, mentoring and work training. “Treatment level foster care is a cost-effective alternative to institutionalization,” Stefan said, adding that “children who otherwise would be in group homes are able to live with a foster family and receive the support that they need to grow into healthy, adult members of the community.”

In addition to her work, Stefan is heavily involved in different community organizations. She is a board director of Episcopal Community Services, Community Housing Works, a member of the San Diego Downtown Breakfast Rotary Club and the chair for the Club’s Pathways to Peace Committee.