Debbie Powell

Debbie Powell serves as the acting associate commissioner and deputy associate commissioner for the Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB). In this role, she provides leadership and serves as key advisor to HHS and ACF senior leadership. Responsibilities as deputy include management of grants and acquisition activities, technical assistance, policy development, research, evaluation and data collection activities, inter and intra agency coordination and the implementation of evidence-based and evidence informed grant programs.

Powell has worked at HHS in senior leadership positions since 1990. She has served as the FYSB deputy associate commissioner since 2008.  In this position she oversees three national programs: the runaway and homeless youth programs, the adolescent pregnancy prevention programs and the family violence prevention and services program, providing leadership for the development of prevention initiatives focused on homeless youth, victims of domestic violence and youth at risk of adolescent pregnancy and pregnant and parenting youth.

Before coming to FYSB, Powell held senior leadership positions at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Indian Health Service, and the Food and Drug Administration. She has also held leadership positions at ACF, as the director of technical assistance at the Office of Child Care, the director of discretionary grant programs at the Office of Community Services, deputy commissioner at the (former) Administration on Developmental Disabilities and section chief in the division of acquisition management. Powell has provided sustained leadership for national and community-based programs that serve and support at-risk vulnerable children, youth, individuals and families for more than 25 years.