Dr. Demi Siskind is a senior research scientist at Start Early, the Foundation for Child Development’s 2024 Young Scholar, and an awardee of the Public Voices Fellowship on Racial Justice in Early Childhood with the OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.

Her primary research centers around the early care and education (ECE) experiences of:

• Children and families from low-income households or marginalized communities, especially those of Latiné/Hispanic origin.
• The workforce.

Using critical theoretical frameworks and through research-practice-policy partnerships, her work provides implications for advancing equity and anti-racism in ECE.

At Start Early, Dr. Siskind leads, “What Bans on Critical Race Theory Mean for Early Care and Education Systems and the Workforce”, a mixed-methods research study funded via the Foundation for Child Development’s Young Scholars Program. In addition, she conducts applied research and evaluation for the Educare Network, leveraging data to generate knowledge, drive quality improvement and innovation, and transform ECE practices and policies that lend to Network and field impact. She also manages Start Early’s partnership in the Financing for ECE Quality and Access for All (F4EQ) project, supporting the dissemination of study findings and active engagement in project activities. Dr. Siskind has presented her work at both research- and practitioner-based conferences and at local, state, and national levels; she is a published, award-winning author writing in peer-reviewed academic journals, “gray” literature spaces, and news outlets.

Dr. Siskind holds a doctorate’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies, with a doctoral minor in Educational Research Methodology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She happily lives in Rockville, Maryland with her husband and the love of their life, Kiwi, the sweetest dog you’ll ever meet.