David R. Schwartz is a social work researcher and AI policy practitioner whose work at the intersection of technology and human services spans more than two decades. A former frontline child welfare worker, he led one of the first formal evaluations of artificial intelligence in child welfare and was among the first researchers to apply artificial neural networks to predictive modeling in child welfare and juvenile justice—foundational work begun in 1999 that helped establish early principles for computational intelligence in social services.
His career has encompassed large-scale technology implementation for child welfare agencies, strategic data infrastructure development, and sustained policy guidance on the ethical deployment of AI across vulnerable population services. He holds a Master of Social Work degree in macro practice from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. Mr. Schwartz contributed to this roundtable bringing rare practitioner depth—grounded in both direct service experience and decades of research—to questions of responsible innovation in public child welfare systems.