Leadership

The National CASA Association is made up of remarkable individuals dedicated to child welfare. Meet our CEO, board president, board members and key staff.

Hear from our newest board members.
 

Our CEO
Michael Piraino has served as chief executive officer of the National CASA Association since 1994, overseeing such projects as a nationwide grants program providing millions of dollars in funding for volunteer advocacy programs, a new 30-hour comprehensive volunteer training curriculum, a national quality assurance program, a major multi-site outcome evaluation project and national public relations efforts.

Piraino has law degrees from Cornell Law School and Oxford University. While practicing law, he represented children as a guardian ad litem and served as a consultant to international social service and child advocacy organizations in Europe and Southeast Asia. Piraino has also worked as a juvenile probation officer and was an associate research scientist for the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University.

Among Michael Piraino's professional achievements, he has authored and co-authored several publications including "Discrimination in Employment" in the Cornell Law Review, A Guide for Children's Advocates and The Children's Databook . He has also been a frequent speaker and presenter at symposia on children, including the United Nations NGO Experts' Meeting on Adoption and Foster Care, the Rockefeller Archives Institute Symposium on Children at Risk and the Amnesty International Forum on Children.

As a result of his service to children, Piraino received the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges' President's Award in 1998 and the New York Decade of the Child Award in 1992.

Our Board President
Britt Banks recently retired from the Newmont Mining Corporation, where he served as executive vice president and general counsel. He is currently a principal in NovaWest LLC, a real estate development firm active in Washington state, Colorado and Arizona.

Banks chairs the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Mining and Metals at the World Economic Forum and was a founding member of the Forum's Partnering Against Corruption task force. He serves on the board of directors of Idea2 LLC, a software development company based in Chicago.