EdsUp!

EdsUp! speaks with Dr. Rosemarie Allen, the Founder, President, and CEO for the Institute for Racial Equity and Excellence. She also serves as an Associate Professor for Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her life’s work is on ensuring equity for historically marginalized communities, especially young children and their families.

We talk with Jake Rudisill, Early Learning Channel Manager at Pitsco (https://www.pitsco.com/) about STEM (and expanded programs), ways to integrate methods into children's education outside of the classroom and so much more!

We speak with Kathy Thornburg, Ph.D.: Dr. Thornburg has over 50 years’ experience in education, including teaching early childhood and policy courses at the Universities of Kentucky and Missouri, directing programs serving children from 6 weeks of age through 4th grade, and conducting state and national research projects. She has published over 100 referred journal articles. Currently she is working to adapt Military Child Development Program policies, procedures, and other program materials to support states in developing a unifying child care system that addresses affordability, availability, quality, and accountability across the U.S.

We interview Dr. Valora Washington, an internationally recognized authority in early childhood education, she is known for conceptualizing, leading, and

executing significant change initiatives impacting policy, programs, and practice in higher education, philanthropy, and national nonprofits. She currently serves as the CEO of the CAYL Institute. During her decade tenure as CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition, Dr. Washington advanced and

professionalized the field of early childhood education with her leadership of the largest credentialing program for early educators in the United States, the Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential. She formerly served as Vice President at Antioch College and the Kellogg Foundation and as a tenured faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Listen to our talk with Dr. Mariana Souto-Manning, who became Erikson’s 5th President in September 2021. Mariana has served as professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University and held additional academic appointments at the University of Iceland and King’s College London. Committed to the pursuit of justice in early childhood teaching and teacher education, Mariana’s research centers the lives, values, and experiences of intersectionally-minoritized people of Color. An Afro-Latina first-generation immigrant, Mariana earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD at the University of Georgia, after having started her higher education journey at Dekalb Community College. Mariana has (co-)authored 10 books, dozens of book chapters, and over 80 peer-reviewed articles.

We talk with Adam Alson, a third-generation grain farmer from Rensselaer. He holds an undergraduate economics degree from the University of Chicago and worked as a bond trader for Bank of America in New York City before returning home to run the family farm in 2011. In 2020, Adam and his wife, Carlee Tressel Alson, founded the nonprofit Appleseed Childhood Education to address the shortage of early childhood education programming and quality child care options in Jasper County, Indiana. Appleseed will open a 70-seat, high-quality early learning center in Rensselaer in 2022. Adam also serves on the advisory and finance committees of the Jasper Newton Foundation, and in his ample leisure time, he enjoys growing garden produce and cultivating a small orchard of 10 varieties of apples.

We talk with Joan Lombardi, Ph.D., a Senior Scholar at the Center for Child and Human Development at Georgetown University and Director of Early Opportunities LLC.

Over the past 50 years Joan has made significant contributions in the areas of child and family policy as an innovative leader and policy advisor to national and international organizations and foundations and as a public servant. Her work focuses on young children, families and communities, and the intersection of health, education, and family support. She currently serves as the Chair of the RAPID-EC study.

Joan served as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood during the Obama Administration and the first Director of the Child Care Bureau during the Clinton Administration.

EdsUp! talks with Dr. Allen Pratt, the executive director of the National Rural Education Association. He has served in this role for several years. The focus of his work is providing a unified voice for rural schools and communities. His work in the past has been in the areas of workforce development, school reform, professional learning communities, and rural education initiatives.

We talk with Dr. Bonnie Zucker, a licensed psychologist and director of Bonnie Zucker & Associates in Rockville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. She specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders and OCD in children, teens, and adults. Bonnie is the author of several books, including Anxiety-Free Kids, Take Control of OCD, and Something Very Sad Happened: A toddler’s guide to understanding death.

Hear our conversation with Dr. Dan Wuori, Senior Director of Early Learning at The Hunt Institute and oversees The Institute’s early childhood supports to state elected and administrative policymakers across the nation. A former kindergarten teacher and school district administrator, Dan served as the Deputy Director of South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness – the state’s comprehensive, public-private early learning initiative – from 2005-2018. In this role he worked alongside elected leaders to develop significant, bipartisan support for early childhood education and oversaw system innovations including the delivery of public prekindergarten in private, community- and faith-based preschools, improvements to the state’s IDEA Part C early intervention system, the creation of statewide program accountability standards, and the expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs. A Past President of the SC Early Childhood Association, Dan was honored as South Carolina’s Champion for Children in 2018.