As I sign off as President of Start Early, I’m filled with gratitude for the relationships that have made this work possible.
Start Early’s 45-year history has always been rooted in relationships. Our programs—from doula and home visiting to center-based innovations like Educare—are grounded in respectful, intentional relationships with families. This same relationship-based approach drives how we partner, learn, and work towards systems change.
I believe that Start Early’s unique value to the field is our ability to work across the three-legged stool of practice, policy, and research. Our work is rooted in our daily experience of delivering quality programs that are responsive to the needs of families. Every day, within the requirements and confines of public funding streams. Staying close to families and communities is the lifeblood of our vision.
Our deep commitment to research is grounded in our value of continuous learning and “creative dissatisfaction.” This culture of asking, “how could we do this better? What else do families need? What is changing and how do we adapt?” is the energy that drives our ambitious vision to make early learning and care a public good.
All of our policy work—both advocacy with legislators and, just as importantly, advocacy with policymakers and support for other advocates—emanates from our program expertise. We show up with lived experience as providers and with an understanding of the challenges that we and our partner programs face every day.
We believe that all change happens in the context of relationships, both for children and adults. This value drives our approach to professional development and peer learning. We’ve invested time and resources to build peer learning networks that advance the field, most notably the Educare Network, the National Summit on Quality in Home Visiting, and now Together for Head Start, Together for Children with Disabilities, and Together for Home Visiting.
Our three-legged stool of program, policy and research fueled innovations like community-based doula programs and the first Educare school for families on the South Side of Chicago in 2000. Start Early brought this program-policy-research playbook to the Educare Network, working alongside local schools, national partners, researchers, and philanthropic leaders to build a network rooted in quality, evidence, and shared learning. That work was shaped by many extraordinary leaders, including Portia Kennel, Cynthia Jackson, and many others who understood both the promise of Educare and the discipline required to bring that promise to life across communities.
It is also how Start Early helped build the First Five Years Fund and First Five Action Fund, which today are leading national voices for early childhood education and care. Their work has strengthened the case for federal investment and helped ensure that the needs of young children, families, providers, and communities are part of national policy conversations.
It is how Start Early has helped advance home visiting as a critical strategy for supporting families—building on decades of practice and partnership to strengthen the field, elevate what families need, and bring people together around a shared vision for early relational health and family support.
And it is how Start Early is now helping to lead Together for Head Start, bringing partners together at a moment when Head Start’s role in the lives of children and families must be protected, strengthened, and better understood.
Across each of these efforts, the pattern is similar. Start Early’s contribution has not been to act alone. It has been to help create the conditions for shared work: relationships, trust, evidence, strategy, and a willingness to keep children and families at the center even when the systems around them are complex.
I am proud of what Start Early has accomplished. I am proud of the programs we have built, the policy wins we have helped advance, the research and learning we have contributed, the networks we have supported, and the systems we have helped strengthen. But I am proudest that Start Early has been a place where people have come together to do hard things with seriousness, humility, and care. I am so proud that we’ve built a place that takes this work very seriously. Not just in intention—but in execution. The people of Start Early know what quality means and deliver it every day, in every function across this organization.
Caring is important—it is what drives us. But we focus as well on results—outcomes for children and families, policies that make a difference, excellence in every endeavor. Because, never forget: we are here to change the world.
Start Early is practical. We look to get things done, and we are willing to work hard and compromise with others to get there. Bipartisanship is in our DNA, and for us, it means working toward solutions, not holding positions.
That has meant being precise in how we think, strategic in how we act, and holding ourselves—and each other—to a high standard. It has also meant being willing to look honestly at what’s working and what is not, and to make changes when the data tells us we need to.
It is also about being intentional about how Start Early shows up in partnership: acting with generosity, creating a mindset of abundance, supporting other organizations and other leaders, and sharing power. I firmly believe that showing up with generosity, humility, and partnership is the most effective way to make an impact.
I am especially proud that Start Early has been a place where extraordinary people have built careers, deepened their expertise, taken on new challenges, and done work that has shaped both this organization and the broader field. Some came to us early in their careers and grew into leaders here; others brought deep expertise from across the field and chose Start Early as a place to do some of their most important work. That mix of talent, commitment, and shared purpose has been one of the organization’s greatest strengths.
I am deeply grateful, too, for the board members and philanthropic partners who have believed in Start Early and invested in what is possible for children and families. Their support has allowed Start Early to innovate, advocate, evaluate, strengthen programs, and bring lessons from practice into broader systems change. I will not attempt to name every partner here, because this work has been carried by many hands over many years. But I leave with profound gratitude for the generosity, trust, and conviction of those who have stood with Start Early and with the early childhood field.
Last week’s Annual Luncheon was a powerful reminder of that community. The room was filled with people who believe deeply in children and families and who continue to show up for this mission. But what moved me most was not simply the success of one event. It was the visible strength of a movement—a community of people who understand that early learning and care is not a private concern, but a public good.
That belief is more important now than ever.
As I pass the baton to Celena Sarillo, I do so with enormous confidence in Start Early’s future. Celena brings deep experience, strategic clarity, and a profound commitment to children and families. She understands the work from the ground up and at the systems level, and she will bring her own vision to the next chapter. That is exactly as it should be.
Leadership transitions are moments of stewardship. I am grateful to have helped lead a thoughtful succession process, and I am proud that Start Early enters this next chapter with a strong foundation, a clear mission, and a leader ready to guide the organization forward.
And it’s been great fun! Working with and learning from brilliant, passionate colleagues and partners who keep you on your toes and on your game. Real work with real impact on real people. What a gift!
There’s a line from Jewish teaching that has always guided me: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” So I leave you with pride and joy, but also with sadness.
As for me, you will find me riding in the hills of Montana, helping to deliver babies in my newfound avocation as a birth doula, and maybe writing a Substack or two.
It has been one of the great privileges of my life to serve Start Early and to be part of this movement. The work continues, as it should, through the relationships, trust, and shared commitment of all those who believe that every child deserves a strong beginning.
