Meet the Team
Pierrea Wallace
Founder and Executive DirectorAs the Founder and Executive Director of Stable Families Advocacy Center (SFAC), Pierrea Wallace has dedicated her career to advocating for children, parents, and families navigating some of the most difficult moments of their lives. After nearly eight years of legal practice in Washington, DC, she founded SFAC from a deeply held belief: families deserve the opportunity not only to remain together whenever safely possible, but to become healthier, stronger, and more whole.
Throughout her career, Pierrea has represented children in child welfare proceedings as a guardian ad litem, including young people navigating both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. She has also advocated for parents and families facing legal challenges involving child welfare, housing, education, public benefits, and family law. Beyond direct representation, Pierrea has supervised attorneys, developed interdisciplinary legal services, and trained legal and community professionals on child welfare advocacy, trauma-informed practice, and effective engagement with children and families.
Representing children and parents made the vision for SFAC deeply personal. Pierrea witnessed the heartbreak and lasting impact that family separation can carry across generations. She came to understand that beneath the complexities of court cases and family circumstances, children often carry a deeply human hope: not simply for a different family, but for their own families and parents to have the support and opportunity to become the healthiest, strongest versions of themselves. Even moments of joyful permanency could carry the weight of relationships changed, histories interrupted, and people deeply missed. These experiences strengthened her belief that whenever it can be done safely, families deserve meaningful opportunities, resources, and support to heal, strengthen their relationships, and remain connected.
Her work with children, parents, and young people navigating multiple systems also reinforced that families cannot always be understood through the lens of a single court case. Pierrea believes that excellent legal representation is essential, but lasting stability can require more: trusted relationships, coordinated advocacy, opportunities for healing, and support that sees the whole person and family. Her work has centered on protecting the legal and constitutional rights of parents and children, advancing racial equity, and confronting systemic barriers that disproportionately affect Black families and communities experiencing poverty.
In addition to founding SFAC, Pierrea serves as Chair of the District of Columbia's Citizens Review Panel, working alongside community members and system leaders to examine the District's child welfare system and advocate for stronger outcomes for children and families.
Through SFAC, Pierrea is building an interdisciplinary family advocacy organization that brings together legal advocacy, social work, lived-experience parent advocacy, youth mentorship, and healing-centered services. SFAC seeks to prevent unnecessary family separation, protect the rights of parents and young people during system involvement, support families through separation and reunification, and help build stronger, more stable family relationships over the long term.
Pierrea founded SFAC with the conviction that family preservation is about more than keeping people physically together. It is about creating the conditions for families to experience wellness, wholeness, stability, and connection, and ensuring that children, young people, and parents have the advocacy and support they need to build healthier futures together.
The Board of Directors
Tyhesia Washington, LCSW
Tyhesia Washington is a licensed clinical social worker serving clients in Texas, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Throughout her career, she has supported children, adults, and families through school-based services, mental health treatment, and child advocacy work.
Tyhesia brings both professional expertise and lived experience to her role as chairperson of the Stable Families Advocacy Center. As a child, she entered the foster care system at a young age and later joined her adoptive family, an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to strengthening and supporting families. Like many children and families involved in the child welfare system, her journey was marked by uncertainty, trauma, and instability. Those experiences deepened her belief that families deserve holistic support, dignity, and every opportunity to remain safely together whenever possible.
While earning her master’s degree in social work, Tyhesia participated in a child welfare scholarship program and completed interdisciplinary training alongside attorneys and social workers focused on addressing systemic barriers affecting families. Through this work, she witnessed firsthand how fragmented systems can create additional challenges for families seeking support. Her experience supporting guardians ad litem within the District of Columbia child welfare system further strengthened her belief that families are best served when legal, emotional, and practical support are integrated into one coordinated approach.
Tyhesia is honored to serve as chairperson of the board and help advance Stable Families Advocacy Center’s mission. She firmly believes that families are strongest when they are supported as a whole and is committed to helping create systems that empower families to remain safely together whenever possible.
Chairperson
Dr. Tyra Moore
SecretaryDr. Tyra Moore, DSW, LICSW, LCSW-C, is the founder of a mental health therapy practice called Moore Therapeutic and Consulting Services. She is a licensed clinical social worker in the District of Columbia and Maryland and has over 20 years of experience working in a variety of treatment settings with youth and adults who have experienced significant trauma. She received her B.A. in Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill, her MSW from the University of Georgia, and her DSW from the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral research was on multigenerational exposures of families to the child welfare system, which she incorporates in her curriculum as an adjunct faculty instructor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Much of Dr. Moore’s practice experience has been with children and families in the foster care system. Her vast experience spans from working as a case manager for teens lingering in foster care to advocacy work at the Children’s Law Center, where she provided consultation to family law attorneys on their most clinically complex cases. In 2021, she formally opened her private practice, seeing adult clients who are presenting with symptoms related to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief and loss, and racial trauma.
Dr. Moore remains committed to serving DC youth and families exposed to the child welfare system. She currently serves on the DC Citizen’s Review Panel, which monitors Child and Family Services. She also maintains a long-term partnership with DC Family and Youth Initiative where she provides clinical training and coaching to volunteer mentors working with older teens aging out of the foster care system. Additionally, Dr. Moore serves on the Magistrate Judge Advisory Merit Selection Panel as a community representative, participating in interviews of potential candidates and contributing recommendations for the selection of Magistrate Judges in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Dr. Moore is honored to bring her clinical and systems-level expertise to Stable Families Advocacy Center's board, furthering its mission of preventing unnecessary family separation, strengthening families, and providing interdisciplinary advocacy and healing-centered support.
Joya is a fervent food systems advocate with a robust background in farm-to-table restaurants, gardening education, and market farming. She serves as Executive Director at Common Good City Farm in Washington, DC. The wonders of nature and the wisdom of her agricultural ancestors left a permanent impression on her as a child and continue to inspire her today. Her belief is that everyone should have access to fresh food grown and prepared in the most regenerative and humane ways possible.
Joya is passionate about sustainability and the power of using our resources thoughtfully to build strong, lasting communities. She believes that meaningful change does not always begin with having more, but with recognizing existing strengths, caring for available resources, and using them intentionally to create something stronger. This perspective closely aligns with SFAC’s commitment to working alongside families, building on their strengths, and connecting them with the advocacy and support they need to achieve greater stability.
Joya is excited to serve as Treasurer on the Board of Stable Families Advocacy Center and bring her values of sustainability, integrity, and transparency to the organization. In this role, she is committed to helping SFAC grow responsibly and sustainably so that its resources can have a lasting impact for children, parents, families, and the communities they call home.
When Joya is not working, she enjoys canoeing, cooking, and going to the movies. Her favorite quote is from author Octavia Butler: “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”
Treasurer