Ida Drury, PhD, MSW, is the principal investigator for the CWTS. Ida has more than twenty years of experience in the human services field, primarily in public child welfare. As an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Kempe Center, she has served multiple consulting and research projects, including the Capacity Building Center for States and the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development. She currently serves as Kempe’s assistant director of workforce development and principal investigator for the Kentucky Alternative Response project. She is a social work educator at Metro State Denver and the University of North Dakota. Prior to joining the Kempe Center, Ida was a research and data analyst for the Colorado Department of Human Services. Before that, she guided Colorado child welfare funding as the CAPTA administrator. In 2009, she served as project director for the Colorado Consortium on Differential Response. Her early career was on the front line in Minnesota as a child welfare caseworker.

Ida’s research and expertise are centered on social work education and training, social justice and equity for family and children impacted by the child welfare system, humanizing interactions between street-level bureaucrats and citizens, and workforce development that facilitates child welfare system transformation. She is committed to the pursuit of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in all parts of her work.

Ida received her bachelor of arts and social work at Wartburg College, in Waverly, Iowa. She earned her master of social work at St. Ambrose University, in Davenport, Iowa. She completed her doctor of philosophy at the School of Public Affairs at University of Colorado Denver in 2019. For fun, Ida likes to read fiction, anthropomorphize her two Norwegian forest cats, and attend concerts and comedy shows.