Tanya Tull

Tanya Tull is a nationally recognized expert in the field of family homelessness.

Tull began working in the nonprofit sector in 1980, when she founded Para Los Ninos (For the Children), in response to an article in the L.A. Times about children living in Skid Row hotels.  She served as the agency’s Executive Director through 1985 and then President through 1996. 

In 1983, Tull co-founded L.A. Family Housing – a nonprofit agency that develops and operates emergency shelters, transitional and permanent housing. Tull founded two additional nonprofit agencies in 1988 – A Community of Friends and Beyond Shelter – as an evolution of her earlier work in the field. A Community of Friends develops permanent, supportive housing for special needs populations and has been operated by others since 1990.

With Beyond Shelter, Tanya introduced an innovation in the field at the time, “housing first for families,” which has since helped to transform both public policy and practice on a national scale (rapid re-housing).  Under Tull’s leadership, Beyond Shelter became a laboratory for social change. 

In 2011, Tull founded Partnering for Change, an expansion of her earlier model of idea generation, program experimentation, and knowledge dissemination for systems transformation.