Meet our team!

As President and CEO of The Family Partnership, Emily Larson is responsible for fulfilling TFP’s mission and vision while also providing strategic oversight of its administrative, financial, and programmatic operations.

Background:

Emily is a seasoned and trusted executive leader with clear values and tenacious dedication to families and community. Emily has two decades of experience setting long-term vision, building high-impact teams, and establishing actionable steps to make meaningful change.

Most recently, Emily served as mayor of Duluth, Minnesota, where she managed complex budgets, fundraised millions of dollars for city improvements, and built deep relationships with stakeholders to coalesce around shared goals. Emily was also a social worker for 12 years, where she partnered with families who had low or no income, who were experiencing housing instability, and who were navigating mental and chemical health issues.

Education:

Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work, College of St. Scholastica

MSW, University of Minnesota-Duluth

As Vice President of Advancement, Ashley is responsible for leading the organization’s fundraising and communications strategy to broaden and deepen stakeholder’s engagement with The Family Partnership’s work. Since Ashley joined TFP in 2022, she has expanded the organization’s fundraising strategy, resulting in a 55% growth in revenue for the Community Campaign and a 113% increase in volunteers contributing more than 2,500 hours annually.

Background:

Ashley has more than five years experience fundraising both regionally and internationally. Her background is heavily steeped in fundraising strategy and organizational growth. Her resume includes serving as a development associate for an international nonprofit dedicated to strengthening health systems in sub-Saharan Africa where she developed and executed annual individual fundraising plans, raising over $2.3 million. In this role, she pivoted during COVID to transform an in-person gala into a virtual webinar, raising over $1 million. Before this, Ashley worked in fundraising for the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation where she raised funds and developed donor relations for the Children’s Hospital.

Education

Master’s in Health Administration, Rutgers University

Affiliations:

Board Member and Program Chair of Leader’s of Today and Tomorrow

Graduate of New Leaders Council, Twin Cities

Presentations/Speaking Engagements:

Ashley leads professional development workshops for women and nonbinary individuals to motivate them to take up space, feel more confident and grow in the workplace. She also presents at industry conferences, most recently at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits fundraising conference on Advocating for Fundraisers of Color.

“Fundraising is not about asking for money. It’s about helping someone bridge the gap between their heartfelt passions and community impact.” 

As CFO at The Family Partnership, he leads budgeting, and financial planning to support long-term sustainability. He is passionate about equity and community impact, with a career shaped by mission-driven organizations, including early work with Head Start programs.

Background:

Robert Pickering brings over 15 years of executive experience in nonprofit finance and operations. He is passionate about equity and community impact, with a career shaped by mission-driven organizations, including early work with Head Start programs.

Education:

MPA, University of Minnesota
MBA, Metropolitan State University
BS in Accounting, University of Idaho

Affiliations:

Board Member, Minnesota Multifaith Network, Nonprofit Insurance Trust
Finance Committee, Emma Norton Services

John Everett Till, Chief Operating Officer at The Family Partnership, is responsible for all program areas, and leads two-generation (2Gen) and brain science-informed program and policy strategies at The Family Partnership in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is also the EGG Enterprise Manager at TFP.

Since 2017, John has led efforts to develop and scale EGG Toolkit, a novel whole family approach to boost executive functioning and school readiness with preschool children and their parents, as well as with parents in home visiting programs and parenting groups. In 2019, Harvard Center on the Developing Child – Frontiers of Innovation selected EGG for a planning grant for national replication and scaling, followed by an implementation grant in 2020-2021.  EGG has now been piloted in five states, and in the fall of 2021 won Minnesota Council of Nonprofits’ Innovation Prize.

In March 2023, John completed a Promising Ventures Fellowship for EGG with Promise Venture Studio, an organization established to incubate, foster, and scale innovations in the early childhood field, and was also a participant in the Gates Foundation’s Measures for Early Success initiative, an effort to advance equity-centered measurement of executive functioning and school readiness. In 2024-2025, John is scaling EGG statewide in Minnesota with support from a legislative appropriation.

He lives in an LGBTQ Filipino-American immigrant household in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Education:

M.S. Biological Sciences, State University of New York at Brockport. B.S. in Biology, St. John Fisher College. John holds an M.S. in biological sciences; his research was on the neuroscience of sensory and cognitive development in children. John is also an alumnus of the Executive Leadership Institute, a two-year executive leadership program of the national Alliance for Children and Families, and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School of Social Work.

Other affiliations:

John Till serves as the Board Chair of the Metropolitan CommonWealth of Connected Communities or MACC, a nonprofit network that is more than 40 member organizations strong, employing more than 2,000 staff members, with a combined annual operating budget of $150 million. Collectively, we serve more than 350,000 individuals each year and are exploring bold activities to create real and sustaining change in our communities.

Presentations/Speaking Engagements:

John is a frequent presenter on Brain Science, Executive Functioning and our 2Gen approach including at: Aspen Institute, Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, and the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being.

“Every child who breathes the air in this country deserves the opportunity to develop their mind, body, and spirit in an environment free of toxic stress – and even in a pandemic, we can all do our part to make this happen.”

Mikki Mariotti is Director of PRIDE, The Family Partnership’s anti-sex trafficking program, bringing more than 25 years of survivor-centered leadership and advocacy. Previously, Mikki worked as a case manager, street outreach worker and supervisor with the DIGNITY Program at Catholic Charities in Arizona. 

Since joining The Family Partnership in 2021, Mikki has worked closely with the City of Minneapolis to develop holistic responses to human trafficking. She played a key role in securing ARPA funding that established the UPSIDE Initiative, a collaboration among Minneapolis-area service providers aimed at prevention and response for members of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities that disproportionately experience sexual exploitation. 

Mikki has also contributed to innovative research on anti-sex trafficking interventions, co-authoring the following: 

• Martin, Lauren, Kayse Lee Maass, Kelle Barrick, Thomas Sharkey, Amy Farrell, Cynthia Matthias, Barış Tezcan, Martha Williams, Tonique Ayler, Teresa Forliti, Joy Friedman, Mikki Mariotti, Christine Nelson, Camille Brown, and Melissa Florey. “Identification of Effective Strategies to Disrupt Recruitment of Victims in Human Trafficking: Qualitative Data, Systems Modeling, Survivors, and Law Enforcement.” Final Technical Report, Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Rockville, MD, March 2024. 

• Clark, Michael, Thomas C. Sharkey, Tonique Ayler, Teresa Forliti, Joy Friedman, Mikki Mariotti, Christine Nelson, and Lauren Martin. “Modeling Disruptions to Sex Trafficking Networks with Other Forced Illegal Activities.” Journal of Human Trafficking 56, no. 3 (2023): 340–354. 

• Maass, Kayse Lee, Barış Tezcan, M. Hodsden, M. Zhang, R. Cheung, Amy Farrell, Thomas Sharkey, Kelle Barrick, Cynthia Matthias, Martha Williams, Camille Brown, Melissa Florey, Tonique Ayler, Joy Friedman, Christine Nelson, Teresa Forliti, Mikki Mariotti, and Lauren Martin. “Reducing Susceptibility to Sex Trafficking Requires Community Support and Resources.” Video, 7:04. The Operations Research & Social Justice Lab at Northeastern University, February 23, 2024.