Anna Palmer

Children need families and families need community. As founder and Executive Director of Crossroads NOLA, Anna Palmer is dedicated to serving vulnerable children and families in Louisiana by recruiting a community of people - foster parents, caregivers, and professionals and equipping them with tools to help children overcome trauma and grow up in whole and thriving families.

Crossroads NOLA has recruited over 70 foster families in the Greater New Orleans area that have welcomed children into their hearts and homes. These foster families laugh, cry, cheer, mourn, listen, and advocate for the children and families they serve. They support, cheer for, and celebrate with birth parents who overcome personal challenges to be reunited with their children. They adopt children who need forever families, permanently changing their status from “foster child” to son or daughter. 

Anna is also leading the charge to elevate the level of care children and families in Louisiana receive by making training in Trust-Based Relational Intervention®, an evidence-based caregiving model, available and accessible to individuals and organizations throughout the state. She supports and coaches school systems, juvenile detention facilities, nonprofits, and state agencies in implementation of TBRI® in their specific context, ensuring organizations make necessary changes to trauma-competent policy, practice, and decision-making. 

Anna and her husband Jon are foster/adoptive parents. They have two sons, Eli (11) and Davis (9). Progress on Anna’s “To-Do List” often stalls to throw, catch, shoot, kick, or hit some kind of ball with her boys.