Recently, Too Small to Fail released a outlining impact and lessons learned over the past decade. According to the report, research demonstrates that parents and caregivers talk, read and sing more frequently with their children after taking part in Too Small to Fail programming in laundromats, grocery stores, waiting rooms and other settings. One of the key takeaways is that trusted messengers, such as pediatricians and librarians, are the “secret sauce” to supporting families with young children in early literacy. 

Too Small to Fail founder Hillary Rodham Clinton was a child advocate before going into politics. , she helped research the 1974 report , which examined the living conditions of American children and surfaced a number of barriers facing them. The findings in that report shaped her views on education and guided her in shaping the mission of Too Small to Fail. 

Clinton is still actively involved in the work, alongside her daughter Chelsea Clinton, who chairs the initiative’s advisory council of advocates and researchers. The council, which includes Dana Suskind, founder and co-director of at the University of Chicago and Joan Lombardi, principal advisor at has helped Too Small to Fail scale its impact and stay abreast of the science behind reading. 

“As a pediatric surgeon and social scientist who believes deeply in the power of parents and caregivers to build children’s brains,” says Suskind, “I am tremendously grateful for their work. Too Small to Fail meets families where they are, recognizing and honoring their inherent wisdom, and supporting that wisdom with the resources every child deserves. It continues to harness one of our most precious and infinite resources: the support of loving grown-ups to unlock every child’s full potential.”

Lombardi adds: “Too Small to Fail has been a persistent voice in supporting parents’ engagement with their young children and pioneering innovations in communities across the country.”

In an interview with Mark Swartz, Chelsea Clinton recollects her experiences over the first decade of Too Small to Fail and sets her sights on the coming years. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Swartz: What stands out to you from visiting laundromats, libraries and other Too Small To Fail sites?

Clinton: I have so many memories. What stands out is just the joy. There’s so much joy on the kids’ faces and also the parents’ or grandparents’ faces when they’re reading to their children in laundromats, whether in Chicago or New Orleans or Philadelphia. And while I’ve been to quite a few of these sites, it’s only a fraction of the hundreds that we helped build. There’s such a warmth and such a sense of welcoming and hospitality. 

Swartz: What do you hear from the parents and grandparents?

Clinton: Real enthusiasm and excitement and gratitude that there now are more books that they’re able to read with their kids and in whatever language they need to be able to read them, to have those bonding moments, those teaching moments with their kids.

Swartz: You’ve talked to producers and writers about embedding Too Small to Fail messages into their shows, and that has had a tremendous reach. How did those partnerships work?

Clinton: I have this vivid memory of my mom and I going to Hollywood and speaking on a panel with lots of writers and showrunners and creative folks. We discussed the importance of reading, singing and talking to kids at every age whenever possible. Whether Orange Is the New Black or Jane the Virgin or Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, they found ways to embed the messages in ways that were organic for them. We believe it has been powerful for the audiences.

Swartz: And they didn’t say, “Thanks, but we don’t need your advice on how to create a story”? 

Clinton: We’ve had really wonderful, delightful, productive conversations with folks in Hollywood over many years. We’ve talked about the importance of parents or grandparents and anyone that’s around [young children] — about the understanding that we are effectively their first teachers. We’ve also had really productive conversations in Hollywood about the ways in which climate change affects our most vulnerable [Americans], including infants and toddlers. We always feel that if we’re sharing recent research and evidence, if it’s something that is in the context of how they’re thinking about future episodes of the future arc of a show, maybe it will be incorporated at some point. 

Swartz: Besides your own mother, who have your early childhood heroes or influences been?

Clinton: Certainly my grandmothers. I was very, very close with both of my grandmothers. I was really lucky to spend a lot of time with each of them as a kid and could not imagine my childhood without them. I only wish that I could have known my dad’s mom as an adult. I always had great teachers, and I remember preschool being so fun. I have quite clear memories of my kindergarten and first grade teachers, Mrs. Minor and Mrs. Mitchell. 

Swartz: How has your own motherhood journey influenced your understanding of the early childhood issues that Too Small to Fail addresses?

Clinton: Becoming a parent didn’t shift what I cared about as much as it sharpened everything I cared about. I cared even more intensely about early childhood education and supporting what parents and other caregivers need to be the best teachers. … Candidly, I didn’t know that I could care any more about the things that I already cared about, and then I became a parent and somehow discovered that I could. That was a revelation to me. Everything feels even more intense because it now feels so personal, because now it’s about my kids and their cohort and the world that they’re growing up in.

Swartz: What are you most excited about for the next 10 years of Too Small to Fail?

Clinton: I’m most excited about continuing to build on what’s working. We have a lot of research now that [shows that] what we’re doing is working, so we should do more of it. We should also be open to whatever our remarkable community suggests that we should try next.

“She could talk,” Tribbett explains, “but she had difficulty pronouncing words because of the thickness of her tongue. She came in with a lot of struggles.” Tribbett helped the family seek out speech support, and it turns out she was eligible for services. After receiving speech therapy, the child, now 3 years old, is able to make herself understood.

Tribbett, who received her child development associate (CDA) credential in the spring through Delaware State University, said she was able to recognize signs that the toddler needed a speech evaluation because of her work with a seasoned early educator mentor with the program.

How Delaware’s Early Childhood Innovation Center Supports Early Educators

In 2021, the state of Delaware opened the  (ECIC), a workforce center dedicated to helping early learning professionals attain CDAs or an associate degree or a bachelor’s degree in the field. The ECIC provides career counseling, mentorship and financial support to break down barriers that often inhibit early educators from pursuing advanced credentials. This spring, the ECIC opened a new facility, which is now the state’s hub for career advancement in early learning.

Kimberly Krzanowski leads the center. She previously held roles as a preschool teacher, a child care center director and executive director of the Office of Early Learning at the Delaware Department of Education. In 2021 when then-governor John Carney said there was money in the budget to do something “big and bold” for young children, she recalled responding, “Well, I happen to have a folder over here full of hopes and dreams.”

Krzanowski said it took four years, a ton of planning, and significant investment including $20 million of state funding and $10 million in federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act to open the center.

Though the ECIC building is located at Delaware State University, all of the state’s higher education institutions are participating in the project, as well as University of the Potomac, which offers an .

This is an opportune moment for early learning in Delaware. The new governor, Matt Meyer, the father of a young child and a former public school math teacher, recently and emphasized the importance of workforce pathways in the field; he also attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new site.

To date, almost 700 students, including Tribbett, have taken advantage of various elements of the programs offered by the center, including mentorship to guide them through the requirements for the credential they’re pursuing and financial support to cover related costs. 

Mentorship, one of the center’s signature efforts, has been underway since the program launched four years ago. A high school student, college student or early educator already in the workforce (which ECIC refers to as a “scholar”) can participate to be paired with an experienced educator-coach (known as a “navigator”) who will work with them toward the credential they’re pursuing. The ECIC provides each scholar with a laptop and a $500 stipend and pays their assessment fees. 

The program also offers financial incentives for career advancement. When a scholar completes six months working in a licensed child care program, they receive a $1,000 bonus. The size of the bonus goes up with each step on the degree ladder — $5,000 for an associate degree, $10,000 for a bachelor’s degree.

A Mentorship Model Boosts Educators’ Confidence

Tribbett’s mentor, Phyllis Roland — an educator living in Bear, Delaware — sees the potential for ECIC to increase the number of educators in the state and to boost the quality of education provided. 

Roland has decades of classroom experience and has been an early childhood advocate for years. She has lobbied for child care in Delaware and in Washington, D.C. “The child care trenches are demanding and time-consuming,” she wrote in a . “And those conditions often make it hard to advocate for yourself and for your colleagues.” 

Roland visits Tribbett’s class twice a month, on top of two reflective monthly Zoom meetings. As part of her CDA, Tribbett composed a two-page philosophy statement containing the assertion: “I believe that by observing the children that enter my care I can meet them where they are and develop a plan to be able to help them reach their goals.” 

Roland praises Tribbett for providing a positive example for the children she teaches, who often have issues at home. “You’re preparing them to be successful in a classroom, so your role is very important,” she tells her mentee.

Tribbett said the pairing has boosted her confidence, a factor that might keep her in the field and drive her to tackle higher levels of certification. Tribbett, who is the mother of six children, is currently deciding between applying for her paraprofessional certification at Delaware Technical Community College or working toward an associate degree. 

“As a coach,” Roland said, “all I had to do was help Jazzie articulate everything that she does on a daily basis. I think she never had an opportunity to toot her own horn, and so that’s what she did. She’s very skilled and very capable.”

Krzanowski sees this kind of alchemy as vital to the field — and to Delaware’s economic well-being. “We’re seeing our matriculation numbers really increase,” she said, “because now they’re like, ‘If I did this CDA, now I’m ready to go to the community college or to somewhere else.’ And they have that confidence. It’s life changing.”

Mark Swartz: What can people expect from this year’s NAEYC conference?

Michelle Kang: I think people will find the joy, hope and community that we all need to sustain us in doing the difficult and demanding work of early childhood education day in and day out. This is our second annual conference back in person since the pandemic.

Our virtual gatherings were — and continue to be — great ways for far-flung educators to connect, but our members are also clear that they find so much value in coming together in person to solve challenges and celebrate success.

So, whether you’re working with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners or adults, in colleges and universities, in centers or schools or family child care homes, you can expect to find your people. That’s the community of belonging we’re striving to create, at NAEYC and at this year’s conference.

Swartz: The workforce needs each other. How does NAEYC foster community?

Kang: Community is the core of our work. As a professional membership organization, we center the voices and lived experiences of those who are doing this important work with young children every day and in every setting — family child care, small centers, large centers, rural communities, Head Start, military child care programs, as well as faculty members in professional preparation programs and so on.

We know how isolating the work can be, but our membership community alone is 60,000 strong, and it’s a place where people can share, grow and advocate together, and where they receive resources, supports and professional development.

We see it happen through our 51 around the country. We see it happen through our , where people come together around shared interests and identities. And we see it happen at conferences, where people experience the depth and breadth of this community, and the joy that comes in being part of something larger than themselves.

Swartz: What does the landscape look like for your members today?

Kang: Even before the pandemic, our members have had to navigate this entirely untenable system where educators are paid wages that do not reflect the value of their skilled and impactful work while parents pay more than they can afford. Today’s inequitable landscape is defined by staffing shortages worsened by the pandemic and, unfortunately, the ending of federal child care relief.

It is clear that our country needs to sustainably invest more public dollars in child care and early learning — and particularly in the education and compensation of the early childhood workforce—at a time in a child’s life when the brain is undergoing the most rapid development.

Early childhood educators build brains and this country’s workforce: they are the workforce behind the workforce. But we can’t help communities thrive across all states and settings unless parents have affordable, high-quality, early childhood education options where their children can be safe and supported by well-prepared and well-compensated early childhood educators.

Swartz: The workforce showed incredible resilience before, during and since the pandemic.

Kang: As a working mother, I came to deeply appreciate early childhood educators and high-quality early learning programs. When our first son was an infant, we lived far away from family, and I remember feeling so overwhelmed. ‘How can I take care of this small human? How am I going to make sure that he is loved, cared for and nurtured?’

It was the early childhood educators in our life and the early learning program that we had that became part of my family. And when my son became a toddler, it was the early childhood educators in our life who said to us that he might be a different kind of learner. We were able to get him support and care as someone navigating the world with autism, so I will always feel grateful for the knowledgeable, caring educators in our lives, not only to support my oldest, but then my other two children as they came along.

At the time, my husband had a crazy schedule, and I really was the primary caregiver. The educators understood that and supported our family in the ways we needed it. Their resilience helped me find my own resilience as a parent as well. They are a true partner in this incredible journey of a child’s development.

Swartz: It’s not for the faint of heart.

Kang: Educators are very special people, and it’s very humbling to be the leader of an organization that speaks with and on behalf of those who are doing this incredibly hard work every day.

I am so grateful for the skills and expertise they have, and I know our NAEYC staff, Governing Board leaders and Affiliate leaders are working each day to bring our skills and expertise to the service of supporting and lifting them up.

Swartz: What skills and attributes are needed to become that kind of partner?

Kang: Kindness and empathy, of course, along with deep knowledge of how children learn and how to structure that learning. Educators build these strong, reciprocal, respectful relationships with the children’s families, including mom or dad or grandparent or aunt. I recently visited a faith-based program in Pennsylvania where it was evident that the educators are continually thinking not only about how to support children, but also how to engage with their families.

The parents told me how transformational the educators had been in their lives. One of the parents suggested that one way to garner more public support for funding early childhood education would be to take a classroom of toddlers to the legislator’s office so they could see exactly how complex the work is!

Swartz: What are some of the ways your membership gets involved in advocacy?

Kang: Whether they are taking their first step toward engaging with their elected officials, or are seasoned and experienced advocates, a core part of our work is providing equitable and accessible opportunities and pathways for our members to collectively engage with policy and advocacy at the local, state and federal levels.

From testifying in Congress to sharing their stories through our ECE workforce surveys, from making calls to joining Affiliate advocacy meetings to participating in our ever-growing annual public policy forum, our members know their voices are centered and their experiences are amplified in all places of policy- and decision-making.

Just this past year, 63% of participants at our public policy forum were first-time attendees, so we are really hopeful about the powerful future of our growing advocacy movement.

Swartz: How has NAEYC responded to criticism of its (DAP) publication?

Kang: Developmentally Appropriate Practice is a bedrock of the early learning field, and there has been some unfortunate negative attention in political circles based especially on misinformation about DAP and about NAEYC. The publication itself is not a book for children, but it is an important resource for teachers who are looking for research-based guidance to help them support all children in partnership with families.

We have worked to clarify and raise awareness of what DAP is and to rally the educators and families who rely on it to join a large chorus for whom this is an essential support in their work to ensure all children and families can have equitable access to high-quality early learning.

Swartz: How does being the child of immigrants affect your leadership style?

Kang: When my father emigrated from Korea, he had $200 and one suitcase full of belongings to chase the American dream. I admire the courage it took for my father and mother to pick up their lives and move to a country where the language wasn’t their own, the culture wasn’t their own. Their experience has helped me to see how leadership can mean having the courage to try something new, to believe in what you see as possible.

Swartz: Which other leaders do you admire?

Kang: I’m inspired by people who stand for important things.

I think of Malala Yousafzai, who had the courage of conviction to stand on behalf of the principle that girls and women deserve the opportunity to be educated. I find the poet Amanda Gorman inspirational for the impact she has had with her words.

Swartz: How do you know you’re making progress?

Kang: We see educators realizing and stepping into their own power and voice. Progress isn’t always linear, but we all can see the ways in which child care and early learning have garnered more attention and support from policymakers, the press, philanthropy, business leaders and the public than ever before.

It’s wonderful to see our members rising to this moment, taking a seat at the table — even amid the challenges they face — to find that their experiences and their voices do matter and that, together, progress can be made.

When the fellowship was announced, Marcelo Juica, director of programs of the Early Ed Leadership Institute and co-director of the Early Childhood Fellowship, said it would “create a powerful pipeline of trained educators to grow the early childhood education workforce in the city.”

“The fellowship tackles many of the obstacles faced by early educators seeking their bachelor’s degree,” said Anne Douglass, founder and executive director of the Early Ed Leadership Institute and a professor of early education at UMass Boston.

The initiative fits squarely into Boston’s overall early education strategy. “The greatest investment we can make in our future is to support and center our young people,” said Mayor Michelle Wu .

Debra Johnston-Malden, director of the Early Childhood Fellowship program, added that it would “increase the professionalization of the early education workforce in the city of Boston and have a positive, multigenerational impact on the lives of children and their families.”

Early Learning Nation magazine spoke to two fellows who reflect UMass Boston’s commitment to welcoming educators from populations that have historically faced barriers to higher education.

‘Anything in My Power’

Amal Salah, 21, didn’t initially set out to become an early childhood educator. She was studying Health and Society at UMass Dartmouth when she came to a realization: the last time she felt fulfilled had been caring for children at Boston Children’s Hospital. Transferring to UMass Boston enabled her to follow a pathway that excited her.

“As a first-generation student who really didn’t know much about college, I had to find my own pathway,” she says. “I’m the first out of all of my cousins, so I’m the setting example for everyone.”

Salah was born in Somalia. Her parents fled civil war and moved to Italy before relocating to Boston. Her father drives for Uber and her mother stays at home. “I don’t want to be a financial burden on them,” she says. The UMass fellowship relieves that burden, though she still had to convince her parents that early education was a viable career option. “Growing up in an immigrant family,” she says, “You’re basically given three choices: lawyer, engineer or doctor. There’s a stigma around teaching, but as an early educator, I can advocate for those kids that want to pursue different careers.”

Salah, who is Black and Muslim, is determined to break other stigmas, too. “I’m excited about parents and students seeing someone like me in a classroom, which isn’t a common occurrence.” She has also struggled with ADHD — diagnosed only recently — and has learned that it’s okay to ask for help with assignments.

“I tell my brothers, ‘Please ask for help. Don’t be scared to reach out. Look at me, I’ve been through everything, so I definitely know the resources and the people to contact.’”

Salah plans on getting her master’s degree next, perhaps in social work. Whatever course she follows, she promises “to be an advocate to those kids who are not ready to speak up yet and to show them that I will do anything in my power to help.”

Persevering Against the Odds

Danielle Grant grew up in a beautiful area in St. Ann Parish, Jamaica. Her passion to become an educator showed at a young age when she noticed children in her neighborhood not attending school because of their socioeconomic background. “I made a makeshift blackboard and dug white stone to make chalk,” she recalls, “and I would dress up in my mother’s heels and congregate all the children on a Sunday afternoon to teach them their ABC’s and 123’s.”

In Grant’s family, education was a priority. Her mother earned a high school diploma, and her father attended Bunker Hill Community College when he immigrated to America.  Like her father, she also attended Bunker Hill and obtained an associate’s degree in Early Childhood Education. As she recalls, “I just did not have the financial support and other resources, which delayed and derailed my dream of getting a higher education to further pursue my goal of becoming a teacher.”

For the past six years, Grant has worked at the Joseph Lee Elementary School. Previously, she taught after-school programs and was employed at Perkins Schools for the Blind, where she worked alongside students who were blind, DeafBlind (refers to individuals with both hearing and vision loss), autistic and with other disabilities. After a number of personal setbacks, including a major health scare during the birth of her fourth child, the UMass Boston fellowship is helping her to realize her long-term ambition of getting a bachelor’s degree.

“I had to push ahead,” she declares. “The message I was teaching others was the same thing I had to embody in my own personal life, which is persevering against the odds. I kept telling myself: ‘You can do hard things, Danielle. You are capable of achieving your goals. You can defy the odds.’ I repeatedly admonished myself until it sank in and I began to believe it.”

With the emotional support of her husband (Conroy), mother (Rosalyn) and four children (Hannah, Micah, Abigail-Rose and Elizabeth), Grant just passed her first Massachusetts Teachers Educational Licensure exam. In addition to the financial support she is receiving from the fellowship, she is immensely appreciative of the way the UMass Fellowship mentors encouraged her, and of the camaraderie with the other fellows.

At a recent fellowship meeting, she stood up and expressed gratitude to those who made the fellowship possible: “Thank you for tilling the soil and planting the seed of hope. I am going to be a fruit of that seed. I will give back to every child that I encounter.”

Grant’s plans on paying it forward. Recently she wrote a children’s book titled that empowers children, through affirmation, to overcome challenges in order to realize their dreams. Since its publication she has generously distributed many copies to young children — for free.

David Kaz facilitated the conversation with Abt colleagues Adele Robinson and Deena Schwartz. Panelists and policy leaders Beth Bye, commissioner of the and Kimberly Perry, executive director of  discussed developments in their respective regions.

Here are our top five takeaways from the presentation.

1. Low retention and wages observed in early care and education (ECE) career trajectories. An created by Abt for the Department of Labor, following workers over 10 years (1998-2018) after they started in the occupation shows that child care workers, and preschool and kindergarten teachers, on average, rank low in starting wages compared to other professions. Still, only 5% of such workers remain in the same job 10 years later, with 14% staying to work in the field. “Often when child care workers move on, it’s outside of the field,” explained Schwartz, citing retail sales and administrative assistance as common next jobs.

2. Wage growth varies by workers’ race and gender. When looking at two people starting in the same occupation at a similar wage, income disparities are observed a decade later in ECE occupations. “Men, on average, are earning $6.75 per hour more than women, and white workers are earning $3.80 more than Black workers,” Schwartz said. The increases can be explained by a wage bump from a new role or promotions, and pay increases in the same job.

3. All early care providers deserve worthy wages. Robinson noted the difficulty of allocating limited funds in the space. “A lot of decisions have to be made about who gets compensated. It’s not universal.” In the case of Washington, D.C., Perry said the D.C. Council created a task force to tackle the issue, comprising providers, teachers, academics and policy experts. “Ultimately, there was an acknowledgment that we were losing teachers to non-teaching jobs.…What they were looking for was better pay and benefits.”

D.C. started its compensation program with early care teachers, and health, dental and vision benefits were included, and not just for teachers. “The task force had a vision to ensure everyone could enjoy the benefits,” Perry explained. The additional compensation in Washington is funded by a tax on income earners of $200,000 or more.

4. Equitable funding is a priority. In remembering what early child care providers did during the pandemic, Bye said, “Our governor had that idea that frontline workers need to be rewarded.” The state sent stabilization funds directly to programs for dispensation, and 25% of it had to be given as compensation to workers. The iterative process involved community proposals, feedback and edits based on input.

“We felt that COVID did not hit communities equally, and we wanted to ensure equity was at the center,” Bye said. Connecticut advantaged high-need, subsidized, accredited and infant and toddler programs, which were observed to struggle the most with hiring and keeping workers. D.C. similarly focused on equitable allocation. “An equity adjustment will provide programs with an additional amount of dollars to go to their administration based on the number of subsidy seats they have,” Perry said.

5. The United States needs long-term planning and can learn much from models abroad. Raising and adjusting the salaries of every single worker in an early learning program is the long-term goal for a pressing and persistent problem. Worthy wages, Perry said, “are the only way I believe we are going to keep our workers and make sure people feel seen and appreciated for the work they do every day.”

Bye said, “We are at least a decade away from having the workforce we need, and the current crisis is huge. We will need some scaffolding and temporary measures for the next five to ten years as we build the long-term solutions,” citing Scotland and Germany as examples of countries doing long-term planning. “Even with all these funds, it’s not building a system.”

What’s the significance of the name? “For too long,” she says, “Other people have been making decisions on what should be done for us. And we decided: No more. From now on, we’re the ones going to the federal, state or city government to speak on our own behalf about what we should be paid and what things like quality and professional development should be.”

Along with 4PXP Executive Director Laneir Landry, Givens and Wilcox have developed the Early Learning Teacher Corps, a demonstration project that is bringing 50 AmeriCorps members into the New Orleans early learning ecosystem as teacher’s assistants in classrooms serving newborns up to three-year-olds. “Don’t underestimate us,” warns Givens. “Give us three years and we’ll be up to a thousand teachers.”

The project recently claimed the $10,000 first prize and the $1000 audience choice award in the Envision Track at the , which is run out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. (.)

“We are trying to change the way child care is done,” says Givens, acknowledging that Louisiana’s early learning landscape, which never fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, underwent a slow-motion crisis during the pandemic. Half of all lead teachers have left the field altogether. Wages are cited as the primary issue, though a report by also underscores feelings of being disrespected as a reason for finding other work.

Wilcox says, “We knew we couldn’t depend on what we currently have. We had to build a pipeline, and that means finding nontraditional workers.” They designed the initiative to engage college graduates as well as career changers and parents.

Orleans Parish, notes Wilcox, recently passed a millage that is set to generate $21 million for early education each year for the next 20 years. “We estimate that we’ll need more than 800 new teachers to educate all the children coming into the system,” she says. “And we don’t want just warm bodies. We want to make sure that they are getting training. It’s just not about having the textbook, the work, the academic knowledge. You have to have the applied practice, too.” On top of all that, cultural understanding is highly desirable in communities that have endured decades of disinvestment, neglect and systemic racism.

Thanks to a partnership with New Orleans Public Schools, the common application for children now asks parents if they’re interested in working in early care and education; 1100 respondents have indicated interest already. Landry says the program will not only expand the workforce and retain them but also lead to better outcomes for children. “Each of those 50 AmeriCorps members,” she says, “is going to have directly served 45 children working specifically on literacy learning and math skills.”

“This is really about the story about what high-quality early care and education means,” adds Wilcox.

Professor Nonie Lesaux, co-director of the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative, says the Zaentz Innovation Challenge was set up “to surface the amazing work out there. We had all of the finalists come to campus and pitch before a panel of judges. We were open to a range of innovations, all the way from workforce, to an app for direct use by caregivers, to an app for children, all the way up to a policy strategy.”

Bill de Blasio, former mayor of New York City and current visiting fellow at the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative, acted as emcee and described his work to expand pre-K in the Big Apple, stressing early education as an issue that involves racial, gender and economic equity.

The partnership, Givens and Wilcox explained to the judges, builds upon AmeriCorps’s program, which places over 2,000 corps members per year in preschools around the country. Corps members will spend about 25 hours a week in the classrooms, working with an exemplary teacher. They’ll study early childhood and work with coaches on a weekly basis. The positions will pay a livable wage and come with health insurance.

One of the five judges at the event was Mora Segal, managing director of the education investor . She happens to be the daughter of Eli Segal, first CEO of AmeriCorps. As Wilcox recalls, she approached after the 4PXP pitch and said, “This warms my heart that my father’s legacy can be continued in this way.”

Over time, 4PXP hopes to expand its workforce innovations on a national scale.