 Alright, good morning, everyone. I want to thank you all for joining us today for our next edition of our Young Leaders in Public Service. I'm DeAndre Calvert, the Community Engagement Manager for the Program and Practical Policy Engagement here at the Ford School. Today, we're joined by Amy Linholm. First, I'd like to acknowledge Miriam Nagerin and Jordan Incovaya, who will be our moderator for today. And Miriam, who is our administrative assistant here at P3E, but also our tech guru that will be helping behind the scenes. Please note that this event is recorded. So I'd like to introduce Amy. I've known Amy for a couple years now. Actually, we met working on some fatherhood and court issues within the city of Detroit as a part of a PCLP project back in 2019, I believe. And Amy was also a PCLP partner over the spring for our fellowship. So we had a great opportunity to work and the students did a fantastic job working on some surveys. So I thought it'd be a great addition for our students to hear from Amy. So with no further ado, Amy, please take it away. Thank you, DeAndre, for that great introduction. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for having me. I have to say that I was really flattered and honored when DeAndre asked if I'd like to speak to a group of public policy students. So I'm happy to be here today. I'm going to talk a little bit about what I do in my job and then some chronological kind of how I got here and then talk about some joys and also struggles that I experienced in my position. And hopefully with that, it'll be insightful and I can sprinkle in some advice as well. And if there are any questions as I go, I'm okay with taking those. Otherwise, I think there's a question session at the end. So my formal title is Management Analyst. And I work with the Friend of the Court Bureau at the State Court Administrative Office in Michigan. And I've been in this role a little bit over four years now. And I'm going to kind of back up and really dumb it down to explain what my position is because I know a lot of people are sort of puzzled by this job, especially with it being kind of a policy job within the courts. So I do work for the courts at the state level. Friend of the Court for anyone who's not familiar is the name in Michigan for our county offices that provide case management services for custody, parenting time, and child support issues. So for parents who are not living together and have children, kind of how they work out all of those things between themselves. So it's kind of an odd area because it's very social service, social work related, but it's actually within the courts. And most people are familiar with that child support aspect of Friend of the Court work. So for all of these county offices all across the state, all 83 counties, they all do this work. And someone has to set policies and procedures for how they do their work. And then also provide some monitoring and oversight to see if they're actually doing the things they're supposed to do and how that's going. And then provide technical assistance to them sometimes or management assistance. We've had a lot of that going on post COVID, or during not post COVID, during COVID. And as it continues, because we have a lot of people leaving positions, retiring shifts, because people have died. And there's just a lot of turnover happening. And then people have to sort of completely learn their position new. So our office is able to jump in and help with that. We also do, we develop uniform publications for use throughout the state. So for public information to understand what the office does, how it works, we provide training also to those folks across those offices. And because the Friend of the Court is actually an arm of the circuit court, all of those pieces end up provided by the judicial branch. So the Michigan Supreme Court created the state court administrative office to do all those things for all types of courts. And then within the state court administrative office, the Friend of the Court Bureau does the work for Friend of the Courts. So my team that I work with is pretty small. We have six analysts, so six people who are in kind of my position. There's a director, and then we have one support staff person. And most of my colleagues who are analysts are lawyers. I'm, I think at this point, I'm the only one who has a master's in public administration and my concentration in that was urban and regional policy and planning. And with that different focus, I tend to lead or kind of co-lead different stakeholder groups that might have a lot of different types of people. And we're looking at sort of how can things change kind of big picture. And that tends to be a little bit different from the types of assignments that my lawyer colleagues get, not that none of them do that, but I tend to do more of that. So how did I get here? How did I end up in this role? I don't have a traditional or kind of logical path to doing the work that I do today. I went to a small liberal arts college for my undergraduate degree, Kalamazoo College. And I double majored in biology and art, clearly an obvious path to doing the work that I do now in the legal system like quasi social work. Of course, you'd study art and biology makes sense. But at the time, I wanted to be a medical illustrator. And at the end of my undergraduate experience, I had some kind of serious health issues that threw me off course and kind of put my future plans on hold for a bit. And then in the process of recovering from that medical journey, I really developed this desire to help people when they're going through struggling with systems in particular, like the struggles that I was going through were with the medical system. But I kind of broadly just wanted to help people with that because I acknowledged that I had a really hard time getting through that. And I was sort of completely set up for success in my life. I had all the privileges, you know, grew up consistently like middle class, all the privileges from, you know, being a group with all the advantages, except for being male. I had done, you know, everything right and worked hard throughout school, went to a good school, got my degree. And then I just really struggled to find a job. Part of that being, you know, the financial crash had just happened 2008. But also I wasn't at my best because I was struggling. So that led me to kind of start thinking about different career paths. And from having customer service experience and retail jobs, I saw a posting for a customer service position with a friend of the court in my city. I didn't really have any idea what I was getting into initially. And it was a lot to learn. It was very different from what I expected. But I quickly got really invested in the work as I talked to people and heard about their struggles, all the difficulties that their families were experiencing and all the conflict between their families. And then that's something that really, really I connected to, to wanting to find a way to reduce that conflict rather than having friend of the court be something that seemed to be just this tool that people could use against each other. Or that without folks wanting it to be that, that's what was happening. So at friend of the court, I was promoted pretty quickly a couple times to becoming a case manager. And in that case manager role, I found that I wanted to change a lot about how the office operated and how kind of like the system as a whole operated. And I was often running into red tape because those changes were required by law, they were required by court rule, kind of things that were outside of a local offices control to change. So then I went back to school, got my master's degree in public administration, and initially, I wanted to leave the child support field completely because by then I just felt like this system is too broken. There's too much that needs to change and I'm overwhelmed by the thought of doing that. So I ended up going into nonprofit work for a couple years, worked for a small international development nonprofit. But I found myself still running into wanting to change the rules and laws that sort of governed how things could happen. So then I started looking for a policy job and ended up back in child support. And the way that that happened brings me to a point that I wanted to emphasize for all of you, and that is having connections in the field that you're interested in going into, that those connections can be really, really vital. I wish that wasn't the case, that it didn't seem like you had to have this personal connection to be able to get a job. And I don't think it's always necessary, but it definitely helps. A lot of employers are working to change their hiring practices, but there's still a lot of work to be done. And I think that having that personal connection can go a really long way, even if it's just that someone tells you there's a job opening, because maybe you weren't looking, but they reached out to you and they said, hey, there's an opening, I think you might be suited for, please apply. So my advice is that if you think you know where you might want to be, get creative about how you can start making those connections, see if there's an opportunity for an internship for a research project like the students that we've been working with, or just reach out to someone in an organization you're interested in to kind of ask them about what they do. And honestly, any of that kind of initiative, I think would go a long way with starting those connections being formed. I got into the position that I'm in now, because when I was working at Friend of the Court, there was a state level project to create a new child support calculator that the public could access. And I had heard about it, volunteered to be part of that team. And then I made blasting relationships with folks at the state and they recognize that, oh, you think about the big picture, you're wanting to help people, and those are qualities that we're looking for in an analyst. Another piece of advice that I wanted to give, especially for women or any other groups that aren't sort of groomed in this way that I think men, especially white men, are often groomed for leadership and advancement. And that is to sell yourself and be bold. So I'm not suggesting to go overboard and say that you have qualities and knowledge and things that you might not have, but identify your strengths and maybe you have to work with a mentor to really identify what those things are that set you apart from others that they see if you don't see them yourself, and then know what those are and be able to speak about them. For me, that's something that is not, it's not an inherent trait that I have to sell myself. And it's definitely not the way that I was socialized to be growing up. And I've experienced that sometimes that seems different between, I'd say like generally the women I work with and the men I work with that the on average, the men seem a lot more comfortable sort of saying I'm good at this and I do that and kind of moving their way up as as they are able to sell themselves. I wanted to mention that mentors having a big role in that I was fortunate enough to have a couple of mentor figures along my career path who really pointed out to me what they saw as my strengths. And that I think that can be, I don't know how much to emphasize how helpful that can be. So if you don't have a mentor like that, reach out to people because that's something that I've done is just sort of like cold, cold called people who I admired in the field I wanted to get into and ask do you do mentoring? Could you mentor me? I'm looking for someone like you to be my mentor. Shifting gears a little bit. Some of my joys in my job today are duties that that I've gotten to carve out that were not originally part of what my team traditionally does. And that goes back to these kind of meetings with different stakeholders. And so one of those roles is acting as a liaison with corrections. So especially the Michigan Department of Corrections and friend of the court offices because a lot of the people who we serve are a lot of the parents that friends of the court serve are incarcerated and a lot of incarcerated people are parents. And there's a lot of damage that really can be done to those family relationships during that period of incarceration and and those that can be irreversible damage. So where we have opportunities to improve that process, we're really trying to create better relationships and and sort of create a continuous system of keeping people in touch with other agencies they're connected to. So if they're incarcerated, but they have a child support case, getting them in touch with their friend of the court office to see, is their child support still charging? It's not supposed to be if they're incarcerated, but is it? And if it is what what needs to happen to get that stopped? And just giving people an opportunity to ask a lot of questions to and often the opportunity to ask questions leads to folks learning newly that they even had the right to certain things like to pursue some sort of contact with their child while they're incarcerated. A lot of folks don't realize that that's an option and there might be for some folks it might not be an option their parental rights could be terminated if you know depending on what the circumstances were surrounding their incarceration but for many that's not the case. And there's something they can ask for they can pursue through the courts getting custody or parenting time arrangement or maybe they don't need the court to get involved they might be able to just work it out with the other parent. So that has been some rewarding work to to sort of move things forward in that area. Another liaison role that I play is a fatherhood liaison again between friend of the court offices and then fatherhood programs and so DeAndre mentioned that's how he and I met. Initially we had a grant initiated Michigan Action Plan for Father Involvement is what that group is called at the state level and then kind of at the same time or right after that group was formed the Metro Detroit area was forming a fatherhood policy group so today I work with both of those groups and I really got myself into that by chasing down this social science researcher at a conference in DC I'd been like reading her research on fathers and child support and you know really really was into it wanted to like implement some of the things that she talked about in her research and I had seen her picture on her papers so when I saw her walking around I was like that's her oh my gosh I have to go talk to her and through going up and talking to her I found out that in my state we were actually starting fatherhood work and then kind of bullied my way onto that project so my advice there is again to just not be shy about making connections and telling people when you're interested in in something that you are interested in you want to be involved in often I think it works out if you just say that see I'll also say in the realm of the fatherhood work there's been I think especially for me working in that area a lot of relationship building that's been really important the fathers who I think most need systems change to kind of remedy the damage that has been done and their families they don't look like me I'm a white middle class my entire life childless woman I work for the state I represent the very systems that are like damaging people's lives at times and so why should people trust me why should they think that I support their cause and so in this area I think what's been helpful is to just really show up consistently you know always show up to the meetings some struggles that I wanted to mention that I don't think I've talked about yet the I have talked about the red tape but I wanted to just highlight I assume that all of you who are listening as public policy students you might be considering a job in the government and I just caution you or want you to be aware that working in government with that bureaucracy can be kind of maddening especially if you are you're going into it like passionate about making change and you want to see the results of that work it can happen absolutely it can happen but it takes time and sometimes just all the steps involved all the checks and balances that are in place the number of people who have to approve something before it can get published it can just drive you a little bit crazy so just wanted to to put that out there that like you know keep in mind that that is still out there all of that red tape but that's not to say you shouldn't pursue increasing government efficiency and you know really keep trying to accomplish all the things that you're passionate about and I wanted to sort of close out what I'm talking about with a couple examples of things that I've seen start to change in the like four and a half years I've been in my position just in 2021 yeah 2021 it's hard to keep track of time during covid we published our new parenting time guideline a michigan parenting time guideline so that is governs it recommends what should happen with parenting time for everybody in the state of michigan so it's intended to be accessible and usable for parents but also for judges for friend of the court workers for attorneys anybody who's working with folks and deciding what the time will look like that a child shares between two parents who don't live together and a lot of a lot of important changes happened in in that new release we worked with an advisory committee with folks from all different fields to put it together it took a long time but it's finally published and there's still more that we need to do to increase accessibility and usability and that was something that the student group worked on earlier this year to get a survey out to you both parents who might use the guideline and then practitioners use the guideline to kind of identify those areas but we we have something new that addresses a lot of changes in family structure finally um just yesterday I found out that we had a grant proposal accepted to implement a plan for doing a two-generation or whole family approach to friend of the court services which basically means thinking about the child and the parent all the time at the same time as we decide how to serve that family and that is really that's a big shift from just being compliance driven short-term driven you know you have child support that's owed did you pay it what can we do to make you pay it and not thinking about like where is that money going to come from that we're saying you need to pay right now or else so that sort of like long-term view will be a huge shift and and I have been researching to Jen and talking people's ears off about it for like at least three years now and finally we just got this grant proof to start doing work on that so that's really exciting um and yeah the fatherhood work is the other point I wanted to make that we're finally seeing friend of the court offices some that that might have been really opposed to considering like partnering with the fatherhood agency being more and more interested in that and sort of understanding that they don't have a good relationship with a lot of folks that they serve and they need to be a little bit more creative and think outside the box and partner with folks in the community who do have better relationships to actually serve those folks better so we're seeing that change as well and with that I think I'll turn it over for questions thank you so much Amy that was that was wonderful and I think gave a lot of insight into uh government work and I especially appreciated to someone considering government work your disclaimer on the red tape um so we do want to open it up for questions uh we want it to be very much a dialogue so if anybody has a question you can either raise your hand and ask it or if you can write it in the chat and I will read it out for you um if no one has a question right now I have probably a million that I could just toss out rapid fire um so the first thing that that comes to my mind is wondering about how you go about that process you mentioned of bringing these these outside very marginalized voices into this this structure that is very much kind of built without them in mind or built in opposition to them um and especially considering the the kinds of rooms you mentioned being in and the kinds of you know the kind of experiences that tend to be in those rooms so I was just wondering if you could say more about about the process of how you bring those voices in and and that experience sure I can try um and I honestly I would say it's an ongoing journey that we still have a lot of work to do um I think in some instances what is most helpful is to just do research um and and bring sources to whoever the higher ups are who need to sort of approve um that other folks should be involved in the decision making and in sharing their experiences that play into the decision making um it's it's a shift really for I probably all large government agencies but I think um for the judiciary in particular it's like the most conservative branch I'd say and um it's it's difficult to sort of shift this perspective that tends to be um judges and folks like judges you know they have all this education experience that qualify they're the ones to make the decisions and to sort of shift that and say well we should also involve the people who are being impacted by this because we don't know what they're experiencing if we don't ask and hear from them and they might have ideas about how to solve their own problems that we wouldn't have um so I have found that me just saying that I mean that's that's very much something that during my uh master's program you know was sort of like pounded into all of our brains um but it's not common knowledge for everyone and I'd say especially like leadership in government who may have been in their positions for a really long time um it's not necessarily common knowledge so even just to get that point across takes some some effort some convincing but I think research uh tends to be maybe the most helpful thing um something that that I did earlier this year no 2020 I think was the first one we started doing these um web-based parent panel discussions where we um worked with so I I worked with someone I had a relationship with like a community-based agency and asked if they could get a group of parents together who'd be willing to share what their experience was of the child support program um with a whole bunch of child support program workers and those conversations um I think really really paved the way for a lot of folks to sort of shift their understanding as they heard people share their story that was something they had never thought about before um like there was one dad in the first panel who talked about being having to sort of get past feeling embarrassed that he didn't have enough money to pay what somebody had decided was the amount that he had to pay every month and there were so many people who told me like I never thought about that like the embarrassment of not not having the money for what like this government agency said hey dad you should pay this much um so yeah I that but that was sort of like this creative way that I had to think of over time for how to you know start getting the folks who I thought should hear from parents to actually start hearing that because I was hearing it from going into these fatherhood groups um and hearing from dads directly or folks who worked with dads directly all the time um but not everybody else was hearing that and I think hearing directly from people makes a huge difference so that was a long answer did I actually answer your question no you did yes yes that was great um yes if anyone else has a question you can feel free otherwise I can ask a follow-up to my question yeah I'll add to I don't think there's like one definite path for doing that you know I think depending on your situation it can be very different so you kind of have to assess like what the needs are what the barriers are and and try things out and it might not work out the first time yeah okay Mary has a question in a few minutes um sorry that was a separate separate thing um so a follow-up I suppose to to all your great points I'm wondering how how you navigate running up against perhaps more fundamental differences in what the goal of the agency or the governmental branch even is because you mentioned that a lot times it's a shift of perspective and some of these shifts I can see being very like trying to move a mountain type of thing like is the goal of the judicial system to like what is that goal and if you have a different view of someone else in the room how you navigate that kind of fundamental difference yeah that's a really good question so I would say that I think that I was probably fortunate that the time that I entered into this role um the child support program the Michigan child support program strategic plan and vision had sort of just been revamped um to something that made a lot of sense to me and and aligned with what I would think it should do and then for the state court administrative office um similarly strategic planning had just happened and the the shift um was one that that aligned with how I felt and so I I guess one piece of advice is maybe I mean unless unless you want to take on trying to fundamentally change that organization um maybe don't accept a job that that has that doesn't have stated objectives that you agree with I mean small things I think are totally possible to move but but something that I consistently go back to when I run into sort of like opposition in there's some something that I want to pursue a project I want to pursue I think we should be shifting the way we do business and I bring it to my boss or my boss's boss or whoever it is and there's some disagreement I bring it back to the strategic plan and I say this directly aligns with what we say our goals are and what we say we want to do for families for people who use the court system like this this will accomplish that and so unless you're saying that's not what we believe then I think we should do it. Does that help? Yeah that's that's helpful thank you. Yeah no problem. Mariam you you had your hand up? Yes I actually I'll go for a question so um it's really impressive um just just through hearing your your journey it was really impressive to to see how you you know move from position to position and I wanted to know I guess it seemed a few things a few a few a few thoughts that it's definitely good to have mentors it's good to have an elevator pitch especially when you're when you're trying to sell yourself as you said before um so one question I had was you know how did you go about finding the right people to talk to or even the right the most helpful mentors like how did you go about finding those people to help you? Yeah um great question so one one of my like first really important mentors in in my sort of new career path that I'm now on um just happened to be a supervisor who I interviewed you know I interviewed for a position and she was the supervisor and she was someone who sort of just recognized my strengths as I would come with questions and I would say why is this like this can't we do it differently? This is not efficient or you know this is not serving people well or the language that we use that's people don't know what that means can't we change our forms um and she just happened to be someone who was on the same page with that who recognized that I was asking really good questions I was willing to do the work and then would sort of reflect that back to me um so that that I would say was just luck I don't think I sought that out um but also I you know I wasn't afraid to to say what I wanted to change and and that worked in my favor by sort of speaking up and saying I I see an opportunity for change here um another sort of important mentor that I've had the last couple years um she is the the director of the Michigan Child Support Program and she's a woman she's a white woman she she has just like qualities I would say I could relate to and I knew she started in her position relatively young and I was sort of struggling with being in spaces where it seems like I felt like I wasn't always respected as much as other people like it was it was hard to get people to listen to me so I was seeking out a mentor who I thought maybe had struggled with similar things before I didn't know for sure and I just reached out to her and and said those things and asked you know if she would be willing to mentor me and it turned out she had mentored a lot of people before and sort of had like such a full mentoring plate that she ended up getting a group of women together to um have us talk to each other and then like see if we could also form other mentoring relationships to sort of share the the mentoring burden if you will. Actually building up off of that um how do you delegate because you you know you have a lot of tasks that you have to take care of how do you delegate some of the things that you that you need to take care of um without feeling that you have to do it all basically because I think sometimes women especially take on a lot and so you know how do you delegate that well so that you can get your job done but also feel like you've accomplished your goals basically. Yeah so full transparency this is definitely an area where I could do better and I and I know that and there are and in some of the like the fatherhood projects that I work on I I do take on too much that is definitely true but I also um I'm getting more and more comfortable with just showing up to the meeting and saying hey I'm chair of this but it's too much for me I need a co-chair who wants to step up someone needs to step up I can't do it all um and and that's I mean that's a journey for me to get better and better at at saying those things and and identifying where I need someone else to step in I'd love to take on more interns and delegate more things to them I did take in take on an intern for um a task I'm currently staffing the Michigan Task Force on Forensic Science which is like totally outside of what I normally do but they needed someone to support the Chief Justice in that work because she's the chair of that um and and they identified that I work with a lot of stakeholder groups so maybe that would be something I'd be good at and um I did end up taking on an intern for that work and and so I have been able to delegate a lot of things to that intern. Other questions? Oh I've got more I want to be careful. I am curious about your kind of two aspects of your nonprofit work prior to or in between your government work firstly is how you see the difference in like organizationally between working in a nonprofit especially a small one um with the organizational challenges that you've already identified of working with the government um and I'm also curious because you're the nonprofit you worked for was focused on women and girls issues um and now you're working with fathers and I was curious about the the differences and similarities that you see in working with these different populations. Sure big questions really good questions but big questions a big picture person yeah um let's see the dynamics so and I was at a very small um nonprofit we had lots of volunteers but like very very few paid staff people um so the the organizational structure the power structure the sort of like formal rules and procedures for how things happened drastically different I mean so different I I did you know nearly everything at this small nonprofit where I was like mid-level management which basically meant I was managing all the volunteers and then sort of managing our a couple other paid folks but I mean I was doing marketing I was doing fundraising I was doing the program management I redesigned a website I I didn't know how to do that we went I mean everything strategic planning um it's very very different working for a large um government organization with so many defined like divisions that have their duties that are exactly what they do and I think just recently this like stay in your lane terminology sort of like came back because I don't remember where it came from exactly but with strategic planning they identified these different lanes like education and whatever else um so that that aspect is quite different where it's very much like this is your job and only this is your job and if there's something else that you want to do that's outside of your job you need to sort of ask for permission and maybe maybe you don't get approved to do this other thing um there's a lot more you know being being careful about what information you share um and who you share it with um yeah lots lots of differences there I don't know if I touched on specifically the things you're wondering today yeah okay yeah and then um differences and similarities working with um women and girls in an organization that that is attempting to serve women and girls versus working with fathers and organizations that serve fathers um honestly there are a lot of similarities because unfortunately or I I don't know if it's necessarily universally agreed upon as unfortunately but a lot of the ways that in developing countries the organization I was working for was trying to empower women in education um financial empowerment and healthcare those are some of the same things that a lot of fathers here are struggling with in some of the same ways we're trying to empower fathers and really it's for me it's it's all about making families as a whole stronger setting kids up for success in their development to have like this healthy environment to grow up in and then overall community health and strength in the long term so even though you know one was fathers and one was mothers um a lot of similarities thank you that's very insightful are there any other questions floating around the audience I just have one um you know as students are thinking about going into uh into working for the government and you know you've talked about red tape a couple times what are some of your kind of personal size professional coping mechanisms to deal with that red tape and you know I've worked for city government and I work for the state and I just know especially at the state level the process can be slow so how do you kind of woosa and and and and keep uh keep encouraged while you're waiting for uh some of those things to pass yeah that's a good question sometimes I wish somebody else would give me the answer to that um I mean being able to vent to folks who can relate to it I think is is always helpful not to go overboard with it but just being able to talk to like a colleague who can relate and not feel like you're the only one who's frustrated by it um but also I would say again having like relationships and and connections that you can use to at least sort of check on where something is and kind of see like okay is there any way around this is there something extra that I can do that would help you speed up this process um that tends to be my go to like I don't like waiting I just want to make it happen so what can I do to make it happen how can I can we change the process because the process is crazy um and and occasionally that happens like we we have all these court forms um that have a very defined process for like if if a legal form that you know someone is required to use when they file a certain type of motion in the state um if that is going to be changed it has to go through this very formalized process and at some point early on in the pandemic we had a form that had an address that needed to be changed and it was going to have to go through this like crazy long process where this committee has to meet they have to consider the change they have to approve it and the committee wasn't scheduled to meet for like the entire year and yet this was just a mailing address on this form that said you know mail this form to this address and we knew it had changed like that government agency did not reside at that address anymore and we actually we'd managed to get that process changed and to say for the types of changes that are simply just change of information that that is agreed upon we can go a different path we don't have to have the committee meet to say yes we vote we agree blah blah blah so not so much a coping mechanism but uh I I just want to try to change it which can still be frustrating and then I need to vent to people absolutely thank you yeah as a a follow-up to to the point you just made I'm curious about I imagine there's different strategies for when the change that needs to be made or that you want to see is coming from legislation that you're required to follow so I was wondering about your and your departments like relationships with legislators at a legislative branch and how you navigate those relationships another very large and broad question yeah so this one has a little bit more specific answer because like the judiciary really isn't supposed to be making legislative change so if there are areas where you know there's something that someone within the judiciary needs to wants to advocate for we do have a legislative liaison and so it sort of goes to that person and they have their relationships within the legislature to to see about getting things changed and it's usually you know a relatively minor change like the language that's in an existing law um no longer jives with language somewhere else and and so that needs to be adjusted um but that is typically how that happens and then then some quite often we get pulled into sort of analyze proposed legislation to just kind of look out for where there might be issues with existing court process and so that usually would be something that is being proposed by maybe a legislator on their own or it might be something sort of coming out of the executive branch and then we get pulled in to sort of do our analysis and just see if there are any red flags thank you yeah no problem and i think if there are no more questions deandre would you like to bring us home yeah yeah thank you so much for moderating and amy thank you um i just want to thank amy i want to thank you again for uh for your thoughts and your feedback and and your encouragement i know that the space is it sounds like it hasn't always been easy but it's something that you know i've been able to witness firsthand uh your perseverance and all the change that you've been able to make so i definitely appreciate that as a father too i appreciate that there's someone that's advocating and and being an ally in this space i think it's so important uh at this time i like for everyone to unmute and their audio and video and join me in thanking amy for her time today if you want to pause and i want to thank you all for attending and and everyone's great questions uh please look out for the next uh young leaders event that will be on uh november 9th with michael randall uh he's the senior director of community impact at the american heart association and another community partner of the pclp and then on november 16th with andrea lafontein who's the executive director for michigan trails and greenways alliance i thank you all for your time today and i hope you all have a great day bye everyone bye thanks again for having me