D

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Moderators¹

George Askew, M.D., is the deputy commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the Division of Family and Child Health. He previously served as the first chief medical officer for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In that role he provided expert advice and consultation to the assistant secretary for children and families on the development of plans, programs, policies, and initiatives that address the health needs and strengths of vulnerable children and families. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Askew served as senior policy advisor for early childhood health and development for ACF, where he led a team working on inter-departmental health-related early childhood initiatives and programs, including the home visiting program, joint Head Start and child care initiatives, and programs or initiatives administered and developed in coordination with other HHS agencies. During a previous stint at HHS, Dr. Askew served as the chief of the Health and Disabilities Services Branch of the Head Start Bureau and medical advisor to the Commissioner for the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families. He provided leadership in developing policies, oversight, and support systems to improve the quality of outcomes of medical, dental, nutritional, mental health, and disabilities services to Head Start and Early Head Start children and families. He is former deputy chief executive officer (CEO) of Voices for America’s Children, the founder of Docs for Tots, former CEO

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^1† = member of the workshop planning committee; * = member of the roundtable.

and president of Jumpstart for Young Children, and a former epidemic intelligence service officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a child and family advocate, because of his initiative, vision, and national impact, Dr. Askew was selected as an Ashoka International Fellow. He was recognized as a national and global leader for his efforts to link health professionals with child advocacy, embodying the ideals of civic engagement and creative solution building nurtured by the international fellowship program. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Askew was a Head Start graduate and later attended Harvard University and received a B.A. in psychology and social relations, emphasizing child development. He received his medical degree from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Laurie Brotman, Ph.D., is the Bezos Family Foundation Professor of Early Childhood Development, a professor of population health and child and adolescent psychiatry, and the director of the Center for Early Childhood Health and Development at the New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Brotman recently completed an Ascend Fellowship in two-generation approaches to poverty reduction at the Aspen Institute. Throughout her career, Dr. Brotman has focused on strategies to promote health and development among young children living in low-income, urban communities. In a systematic series of randomized controlled trials with traditionally underserved and understudied racial and ethnic minority populations, Dr. Brotman and her research team have demonstrated that developmentally and theoretically informed family intervention can result in long-term benefits for children’s behavior, mental health, physical health, and academic achievement. This work shows the potential impact of creating safe, nurturing, and predictable early environments at home and in the classroom and highlights the preschool period as a window of opportunity for promoting population health and reducing health disparities. Dr. Brotman has been funded by the National Institute for Mental Health and the Institute of Education Sciences over two decades to carry out this work. In 1998, Dr. Brotman and colleagues developed ParentCorps, a family-centered, culturally relevant enhancement to prekindergarten programs that aims to attenuate the effects of poverty and adverse childhood experiences on health and development. Building on two randomized controlled trials in 18 New York City (NYC) district schools with more than 1,200 children and families, Dr. Brotman and her team are currently partnering with the NYC Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Education to scale, continuously improve, and rigorously evaluate ParentCorps programs, best practices, and tools throughout NYC’s Pre-K for All system, which serves more than 70,000 4-year-olds annually. This work is supported by contracts with the New

York State Office of Mental Health and the NYC Department of Education and by grants from five family foundations. Dr. Brotman was named to the YWCA Academy of Women Leaders in 2009, served two terms on the board of directors of the Society for Prevention Research, and was chair of the society’s 2015 annual meeting. Dr. Brotman was awarded the Society for Prevention Research’s Community, Culture, and Prevention Science Award in 2009 and also the Cornell University College of Human Ecology’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award in 2014.

Judith Carta, Ph.D., is the interim director of the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, a senior scientist in the Institute for Life Span Studies, and a professor of special education at the University of Kansas. She currently co-directs the national Bridging the Word Gap Research Network. Her science focuses on developing strategies to minimize the effects of poverty on children’s outcomes and on developing practices that teachers and parents can use to promote children’s language, early literacy, and social outcomes. Her key research and policy interests include advancing the quality of children’s caregiving environments, methods for monitoring the progress of young children, and strategies for promoting family engagement in early intervention programs. She has been the principal investigator of several multi-site research projects and centers funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Educational Sciences, and the Administration for Children and Families. She was a member of the Federal Advisory Panel on Head Start Research and Evaluation and of the Division of Early Childhood’s Commission on Recommended Practices, and she served as the editor of Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. She was the recipient of the 2016 Irvin Youngberg Research Award given to recognize an individual whose applied research has had significant impact and relevance to the state of Kansas.

Debbie Chang, M.P.H.,^†* is the senior vice president of policy and prevention and a corporate officer for Nemours Children’s Health System. Ms. Chang works to leverage Nemours’s expertise and experience to spread and scale what works through national policy and practice changes to improve the health and well-being of children nationwide. In addition, Ms. Chang and her team work with internal leaders to build on and continue Nemours innovative transformation to a value-based health system. She also co-directs Moving Health Care Upstream, a national collaborative network to test, develop, and spread innovative population health strategies. She is the principal investigator of a $20 million, 5-year cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to improve healthy eating and physical activity for children from birth to age 5 years. Ms. Chang was the founding executive director of Nemours

Health and Prevention Services, an operating division devoted to using a comprehensive multisector, place-based model to improve children’s health in Delaware. She serves on the National Academies’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families and roundtables on Population Health and Improvement and Obesity Solutions; the National Center for Children in Poverty; the University of Michigan Griffith Leadership Center Board; the Asian and Pacific Islander Health Forum; and the Winter Park Health Foundation Board. Nemours is a founding member of the Partnership for a Healthier America and of the National Convergence Partnership, a unique collaboration of leading foundations focused on healthy people and healthy places. Ms. Chang has more than 29 years of federal and state government and private-sector experience in the health field. She has held key government positions, including deputy secretary of health care financing at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, with oversight for Maryland’s Medicaid program, and the national director of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) when it was first implemented in 1997 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Chang’s work on population health, child health systems transformation, Medicaid, SCHIP, and Nemours’s prevention-oriented health system—including its CDC Pioneering Innovation award-winning statewide childhood obesity program—has been widely published. Ms. Chang holds a master’s degree in public health policy and administration from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Marquita F. Davis, Ph.D.,^† is the deputy director for early learning on the Pacific Northwest team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She most recently served as the executive director of the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity (JCCEO), a community action agency in Birmingham, Alabama. JCCEO believes that all people, regardless of their income or social status, are entitled to a life of decency and dignity. At JCCEO, Dr. Davis was responsible for running Head Start and pre-K centers, remaining grounded in the work of what teachers and center leaders are really doing day to day and what it takes to put young students on the path to success. Prior to joining the JCCEO in 2013, Dr. Davis served as the Alabama state finance director. She was appointed to the state finance post in 2011 and was the first female and second African American to hold the position. Dr. Davis previously served as a state commissioner of the Department of Children’s Affairs overseeing statewide pre-K and as the director of the Alabama State Office of School Readiness, where she led efforts to gain legislative support for expansion of pre-K. She also worked for JCCEO from 2004 to 2008 as the director of child development services before she went to work for Governor Bob Riley’s

administration. She received a B.S. from Northern Illinois University, an M.S. from Alabama A&M University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in early childhood education and development.

Danielle Ewen, M.P.A., is a senior policy advisor at EducationCounsel, working to connect early childhood and K–12 systems at the federal, state, and local levels. Prior to this position, she served in numerous leadership positions in child care and early education policy. She previously served as the director of the Office of Early Childhood Education in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), where she oversaw the operations of programs serving 3- and 4-year-old children in high-quality, comprehensive classrooms. Prior to her work in DCPS, Ms. Ewen served as the director of the child care and early education team at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). At CLASP, she worked on federal and state issues around child care and early education, particularly the reauthorizations of the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start.

Jennifer Frey, Ph.D.,^† coordinates the Early Childhood Special Education Graduate Program in the Department of Special Education and Disability Studies and directs the Early Childhood Research Program in The George Washington University (GWU) Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute (ANDI). Dr. Frey received her doctorate in education and human development with a major in special education and specializations in educational psychology and applied behavior analysis from Vanderbilt University. While a doctoral student, Dr. Frey was a Dunn Family Scholar of Educational and Psychological Assessment, and she received the Melvyn I. Semmel Dissertation Research Award. Dr. Frey also earned a master of education in early childhood special education and a bachelor of science, summa cum laude, in cognitive studies and child development from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Dr. Frey’s research focuses on early language acquisition and partner-mediated approaches to early social communication interventions. She works with parents, teachers, and children across home, school, and clinic settings to examine the effects of naturalistic strategies used to support and enhance language and social behavioral development of young children with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, young children at risk for poor language and social emotional outcomes due to factors associated with cleft palate, and children at risk for learning challenges due to poverty-related risk factors. Dr. Frey is a member of the national Bridging the Word Gap Research Network: Work Group #1 (Interventions Designed for Parents) funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and serves as a mentor to a Bridging the Word Gap Emerging Research Scholar. She also collaborates

with GWU ANDI faculty on research investigating social learning, novel biomarkers of language development, and neural mechanisms that predict the success of social communication interventions for young children with autism. Her work has been published in leading journals and handbooks in the fields of special education, speech-language pathology, and school psychology. Dr. Frey, a recent nominee for the GWU Bender Teaching Award, also advises graduate students and teaches courses related to assessment of young children with special needs, language development and intervention, behavior management, research and trends in special education, and quantitative research methods. She is the principal investigator of the Voyages master’s and graduate certificate in autism spectrum disorders personnel preparation grant and the LEEAD leadership grant, both funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, and she also serves as a center associate in the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools at the GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Allison Gertel-Rosenberg, M.S., is the director of national prevention and practice for the Nemours National Office of Policy and Prevention. She is responsible for leading the office’s efforts to spread and scale promising practices and strategic prevention initiatives designed to curb childhood obesity on a national scale and for initiatives that involve the intersection of population health and clinical care. These efforts have included the highly successful Let’s Move! Child Care; Healthy Kids, Healthy Future; and the National Early Care and Education Learning Collaborative initiative with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ms. Gertel-Rosenberg’s involvement has run the gamut from securing funding for these collaborations, as she has leveraged $47 million in grants over the course of her career, to playing a critical role in planning and implementing the strategic and operational measures necessary to make them successful. Ms. Gertel-Rosenberg received her M.S. in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health and her B.S. in public health from Rutgers College.

Rolf Grafwallner, Ph.D., is the program director for early childhood initiatives at the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, DC, where he works with states to improve learning opportunities and outcomes for young children. Prior to joining the council, Dr. Grafwallner worked on early childhood policy and school reform as an assistant state superintendent at the Maryland State Department of Education. He was a teacher, program director, and administrator prior to joining the department. His expertise is in large-scale early childhood assessments, governance, finance, organizational leadership, and early education systems

building. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park, in education policy planning and administration.

Gloria Higgins has been the president of Executives Partnering to Invest in Children (EPIC) since September 6, 2012. Higgins has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services sector and has brought her private sector and civic engagement expertise to the organization, which works to harness the political and financial capital of Colorado’s business leaders to ensure that all children develop into healthy, educated, and productive working adults. Ms. Higgins has a solid history leveraging multiple constituent commitments to improve early childhood programming. This is evidenced by her experience as the founding board chair for the Denver Preschool Program, which enhances the quality of early childhood education and access for all of Denver’s 4-year-olds. For this role she was awarded Exceptional Board Volunteer in 2009. Ms. Higgins was involved in the founding of multiple businesses, including Higgins, Meritt & Higgins; Digital Partner; Epic Advisors, Inc.; and Ruby Ridge Insights LLC. The focus of each organization has been financial services for multi-generational families, blended with technology and financial data aggregation. Ms. Higgins has served on numerous business boards and advisory committees, including for Citywide Banks, Northstar Advisors, Innovest Portfolio Solutions, and the Wynkoop Brewery. She has also been active in the philanthropic and nonprofit community, including with the Colorado Children’s Chorale, The Center for the Study of Taxation, Focus Points Family Resource Center, the Denver General Hospital Finance Committee, and the JFM Foundation. In 2010 she was acknowledged as a finalist in business and finance as one of Denver’s Outstanding Women in Business by the Denver Business Journal.

George Isham, M.D., M.S.,* is a senior advisor to HealthPartners responsible for working with the board of directors and the senior management team on health and quality-of-care improvement for patients, members, and the community. Dr. Isham is also a senior fellow of the HealthPartners Research Foundation, and he facilitates progress at the intersection of population health research and public policy. Dr. Isham is active nationally and currently co-chairs the National Quality Forum–convened Measurement Application Partnership, chairs the clinical program committee of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and is a member of NCQA’s committee on performance measurement. He is a former member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Task Force on Community Preventive Services and of the Agency for Health Care Quality’s U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and he currently serves on the advisory committee to the director of Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention. His experience as a general internist was with the U.S. Navy at the Freeport Clinic in Freeport, Illinois, and as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2014 Dr. Isham was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Isham is the chair of the Health and Medicine Division’s (HMD’s) Roundtable on Health Literacy and has chaired three studies in addition to serving on a number of HMD studies related to health and quality of care. In 2003 Dr. Isham was appointed as a lifetime national associate of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his contributions to the work of HMD.

Jacqueline Jones, Ph.D.,^† is the president and chief executive officer of the Foundation for Child Development, where she is responsible for developing and implementing its strategic vision and goals. Prior to her tenure at the Foundation for Child Development, Dr. Jones served as a senior advisor on early learning to secretary of education Arne Duncan and as the country’s first deputy assistant secretary for policy and early learning in the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to her position in the Obama administration, Dr. Jones served as the assistant commissioner for the Division of Early Childhood Education in the New Jersey State Department of Education and as a senior research scientist at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton for more than 15 years. Dr. Jones has been a visiting faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a full-time faculty member at the City University of New York. She received her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University.

Paula Lantz, Ph.D.,^†* is the associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where she is also a professor of health management and policy. Dr. Lantz, a social demographer, studies the role of public health in health care reform, clinical preventive services (such as cancer screening and prenatal care), and social inequalities in health. She is particularly interested in the role of health care versus broad social policy aimed at social determinants of health in reducing social disparities in health status. She is currently doing research regarding the potential of social impact bonds to reduce Medicaid expenditures. Dr. Lantz received an M.A. in sociology from Washington University, St. Louis, and an M.S. in epidemiology and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin.

Sarah LeMoine, M.S., is a thought leader in early childhood professional development (PD) systems, with expertise in regulations and policy, sys-

tems development and change, and workforce leadership and diversity issues. She holds an M.S. in leadership and policy with extensive experience of more than 27 years ranging from direct service work to national-level research and writing, technical assistance (TA) and training, policy analysis, and advocacy. Ms. LeMoine is the co-director of the Professional Development and Workforce Innovations Department at Zero to Three (ZTT). Previously, she was the director for the National Center on Child Care Professional Development Systems and Workforce Initiatives at ZTT; the director of state workforce systems policy at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC); the TA manager and information services manager for the National Child Care Information Center (NCCIC); and a research and TA associate at the Wheelock College Center for Career Development. Ms. LeMoine has authored and co-developed numerous PD systems publications and tools, including the Zero to Three Critical Competencies for Infant-Toddler Educators™; a PD system cost analysis tool; chapters in Teachers College Press–edited volumes on PD governance, competencies, and systems; NAEYC’s and the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies’ Training and TA Glossary; NAEYC’s Policy Blueprint; NCCIC’s simplified systems model referred to as “the tree” and the related toolkit; and the first national TA paper on cross-sector PD systems.

Phyllis Meadows, Ph.D., MSN, RN,^†* is a senior fellow in the health program at The Kresge Foundation engaging in all levels of grantmaking activity. Since joining The Kresge Foundation in 2009, she has advised the health team on the development of its overall strategic direction and provided leadership in the design and implementation of grantmaking initiatives and projects. Ms. Meadows has also coached team members and created linkages to national organizations and experts in the health field. In addition, she regularly reviews grant proposals, aids prospective grantees in preparing funding requests, and provides health-related expertise. Her 30-year career spans the nursing, public health, academic, and philanthropic sectors. She is the associate dean for practice at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and has lectured at Wayne State University’s School of Nursing, Oakland University’s School of Nursing, and Marygrove College. From 2004 to 2009 Ms. Meadows served as the deputy director, director, and public health officer at the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion. In the early 1990s she traveled abroad as a Kellogg International Leadership Fellow and subsequently joined the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as a program director. She also served as director of nursing for The Medical Team–Michigan.

Larry Pasti, M.A.,^† is a senior director at the Forum for Youth Investment. He provides support to communities and states interested in bringing the Ready by 21 strategies, solutions, and standards into their local work. Through strategic coaching, technical assistance, and tools he guides leader groups to understand the “nuts and bolts” of collective impact and other important systems-level work. He listens first before advising local leaders and helping them target their actions with examples from communities large and small, bringing a big picture perspective to the work. Mr. Pasti joined the forum in October 2008, having retired after many years at the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, where as a bureau director he supported strategic planning and applied research for the agency. Much of his work revolved around coordination and collaboration of government and community youth work—such as rolling out New York’s Integrated County Planning Project and the Ready by 21 Quality Counts Initiative—and on developing quality assurance and evaluations of evidence-based programs, with an emphasis in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Mr. Pasti has helped other state agencies coordinate the use of evidence-based programs and build infrastructure to support those programs, and he has worked closely with such national organizations as Search Institute, RAND, and Child Trends. Mr. Pasti holds a bachelor of science degree in secondary education from Plattsburgh State University and a master of arts in criminal justice from Albany State University, both in New York. His early job as a probation officer has influenced his focus on families throughout his career.

Aly Richards is currently the chief executive officer of the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children, a philanthropic organization founded in 2000 to promote access to affordable, high-quality early care and learning for all Vermont children. Prior to this role, Ms. Richards served as the deputy chief of staff and the director of intergovernmental affairs for Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. In this position, Ms. Richards had leading roles in several of the Shumlin administration’s efforts to support early childhood—including winning competitive federal Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge and Preschool Expansion grants totaling $70 million and supporting the passage of universal pre-K, making Vermont the first state in the country to offer 10 hours of publicly funded pre-K to all 3- and 4-year-olds. For her leadership, Ms. Richards was selected as a 2013 Toll Fellow by the Council of State Governments and as the 2014 Vermont Champion for Education by the New England Secondary School Consortium. Prior to joining the governor’s office, Ms. Richards served on the 2008 Obama campaign and worked as the mid-Atlantic deputy finance director at the Democratic National Committee.

She received her B.A. with honors in international relations from Brown University. Ms. Richards also currently serves as a trustee of the Vermont State Colleges and lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Krista Scott, M.S.S.W., is the senior director for Child Care Health Policy at Child Care Aware^® of America. In her current role she is charged with supporting policy initiatives that make child care settings healthier communities for children and providers. Ms. Scott started her career in public service during college, where she worked for several nonprofit organizations that served youth in after school activities. She has experience working in Head Start/child care settings, providing disabilities services, mental health consultation, and family services. She also has many years working in state special education and disabilities programs, working toward creating inclusive environments and ensuring that services are delivered in accordance with federal law. Ms. Scott has her bachelor’s degree in political science and her M.S.S.W. with a focus on management and policy.

Kimberly Shinn-Brown has a B.S. degree in early childhood education and elementary education from the University of Alabama and has invested 23 years with Ozarks Area Community Action Corporation (OACAC) Head Start in a variety of positions, all of which centered on partnering with families with young children. For the past 10 years, she has been the program director for OACAC Head Start, responsible for strategic planning, community partnership development, and grants management for the agency, which serves nearly 1,000 low-income children and families across 10 counties in southwest Missouri. She has been recognized as one of Springfield’s 40 Under 40 and is a University of California, Los Angeles–Johnson & Johnson Head Start Management Fellow.

Michelle Suarez, M.Ed., is an early childhood developer for Prosper Lincoln. Ms. Suarez is a lifelong educator whose career has been spent serving the most vulnerable children and families. Ms. Suarez retired as a 19-year Lincoln Public Schools elementary principal (Calvert and Everett). Before becoming an administrator, she taught preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and sixth grade over 15 years in three school districts. Throughout her public school career, Ms. Suarez specialized in parent engagement and community partnership to support strong schools. She earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and her master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Valora Washington, Ph.D.,^† is the chief executive officer of the Council for Professional Recognition. In her career Dr. Washington has co-created

several institutions, such as Michigan’s Children, a statewide advocacy group; the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative; and The CAYL Institute. Frequently tapped for senior-level service, she has been the co-chair of the Massachusetts Governor’s School Readiness Commission; board chair for Voices for America’s Children; secretary of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC); chair of the Black Caucus of the Society for Research in Child Development; co-chair of the National Head Start Association Commission on 2010; and a member of numerous task forces and boards, including of the Boston Children’s Museum and Wheelock College. Prior to founding The CAYL Institute in 2003, Dr. Washington was the chief executive officer of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and vice president of the Kellogg Foundation. She has held executive and tenured teaching positions at institutions including Antioch College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since 2001 she has been a certified association executive with the American Society of Association Executives. Committed to action research and policy change, she is a co-author or co-editor of more than 50 publications, including Children of 2010, Children of 2020, Ready or Not: Leadership Choices in Early Care and Education, and Role, Relevance and Reinvention: Higher Education and Early Care and Education. Examples of effective advocacy include work to change the voucher system in Massachusetts that resulted in 52,000 children having opportunities for a 1-year certification period. Designing and coordinating efforts to change the child welfare system in 13 states, the Families for Kids initiative is regarded as leading to important legislative changes enacted by President Clinton. Among many honors, she holds honorary doctorate degrees from both Bennett College and Meadville Lombard Theological School. She was selected for the prestigious Barr Fellowship in 2009. Professional recognition has been received from Boston AEYC; NAEYC Black Caucus; Cambridge Resource and Referral Agency; Center for Adoption Research, University of Massachusetts; National Association of Black Social Workers; United Way of Massachusetts Bay; and others. She was named one of “25 most Influential Working Mothers” by Working Mother magazine in February 1997 and one of Ten Outstanding Young Women of America from 62,000 nominations in 1980. She was educated at both Indiana University and Michigan State University.

Marcy Whitebook, Ph.D., directs the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, which she founded in 1999. Her research focuses on issues of compensation, work environments, and appropriate and accessible professional preparation for the early childhood workforce, with specific attention to how these issues relate to

children’s development and learning. Her most recent reports—the 2016 Early Childhood Workforce Index and Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Early Care and Education Workforce 25 Years After the National Child Care Staffing Study—document the current status of the workforce and analyze how federal and state workforce policies serve to support or undermine effective teaching and contribute to inequitable services for children and families and often pose risks to the personal and familial well-being of the workforce itself. Prior to her current position, Dr. Whitebook was the founding executive director of the Washington-based Center for the Child Care Workforce, an organization she began in 1977 as the Child Care Employee Project. Dr. Whitebook has led several large-scale early childhood research projects, including the landmark 1989 National Child Care Staffing Study, which first brought public attention to the low wages and high turnover of child care teachers and the effect of these factors on child outcomes Dr. Whitebook earned her bachelor’s degree in religious studies and master’s degree in early childhood education from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in development studies in education from the University of California, Los Angeles. She began her career as an infant–toddler and preschool teacher.

Jodi Whiteman, M.Ed., is the co-director of professional development and workforce innovations for Zero to Three. In this position Ms. Whiteman is responsible for advancing Zero to Three’s capacity to offer high-quality professional development and technical assistance services to the early childhood field. Ms. Whiteman serves as the project director for many grant-funded projects as well as private contracts housed in the professional development department. She has a wealth of experience providing professional development and technical assistance on a variety of early childhood topics nationally and internationally. Her past experiences as adjunct faculty at the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University, a bilingual speech/language therapist assistant, an infant/toddler child care director, an early intervention specialist, and a certified educator of infant massage inform her work. She has authored many professional articles on a variety of early childhood topics. Ms. Whiteman holds a B.S. in speech and hearing sciences from the University of Arizona and an M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from George Mason University.

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