Stroll through the halls at Bolton High School in Memphis, TN, and you’ll hear students call out “Ms. Paige, Ms. Paige!” Walk into her classroom on a typical day and you might see Paige Hassel guiding students as they use technology that helps young children recognize letters. Drop in another day and she’ll be consoling a student who’s had a bad day and helping her with a problem.
Paige wears a few different hats as department chair of career and technical education programs and a committed high school teacher who prepares her students for careers in the early care and education field. For the past five years, she’s been sharing her expertise and insights on what it takes to work with our youngest learners. “On day one of class,” she says, “I tell my students you don’t do this because you love young children—that’s a given. You do this because you’re willing to put in the work it takes to help kids develop and grow. It’s a demanding job that requires you to work hard and always be there for the children. You also have to be a performer who plays several roles in the course of a single day.”
And Paige has played them all during her 19 years in the ECE field. She’s pursued her career in Chattanooga, Chicago and now Memphis as her husband’s career took the couple around the country. “I began teaching kindergarten in public school before switching to ECE, where I’ve been an educator, an assistant director and a director.” She says she’s glad she made the change because teachers have more freedom in pre-K than they do in K-12, “where you have to follow a strict curriculum and conform to rigid standards.” Besides, “I have a lot of fun with preschoolers. It just brightens my day to be around them.” And she still gets to hang out with them since taking on her current goal to grow the pool of qualified teachers for young children.
“I’m now teaching high school students,” she says, “but we have an onsite preschool for local children. So, I have the best of both worlds. I get to see my smaller friends, as I call the preschoolers. I also get to see my taller friends, who attend my classes and hone their skills in the preschool. I tell my students that the children are at an age when you can play a vital role in their development and attitude toward learning. You’re planting seeds and that’s why it’s so important for you to earn your Child Development Associate® (CDA) credential.”
Paige began looking for ways for students to earn their CDA the first year she began teaching at Bolton High. “I like the CDA,” she says, “because it’s very hands-on, so you know what you’re getting into when you pursue a career in ECE.” And Paige has a good grasp of the accreditation process since she has gone through it. “I thought if I’m going to make my students get a CDA, I’m going to do it myself.”
This hands-on approach made Paige an effective center director in her previous role. “I never asked my teachers to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” she recalls. “I wanted my teachers to know I appreciated them though there was never enough money to pay them as much as they deserved and give them the benefits they needed.” It’s a dilemma that plagues the profession as a whole and made it a challenge for Paige to keep competent, qualified staff.
This broad problem demands policy changes that were clearly beyond her control, but she did manage to get her students the money they needed to earn their CDA credential. “Our school has a lot of low-income students who can’t afford the fees they need for testing and assessment of their skills in the classroom,” she says, “and it took me two years to meet their needs.” She did a lot of work, put in a lot of hours and went to a lot of meetings. “It was a long, hard process,” she recalls, “but it was worth it since it was the students who won out.” In the past two years, 24 of them have received their CDA fees from the Tennessee Early Childhood Training Alliance (TECTA), a statewide group that promotes the growth of the ECE profession.
Paige has also taken steps to advance her field by speaking at the Tennessee CTE Summer Institute. “I talk to teachers across the state on how to help their students get the CDA credential,” she says. “I provide an overview of the CDA. I walk by them step by step through the credentialing process, describe how I help my students with their competency statements and explain what has worked for me.”
One key to Paige’s success is her active campaign to get students, including the school’s young men, engaged in ECE. “I hate the stereotype that men who want to work with young children are weird,” she says, “so I try to attract both males and females to my courses. I stand in the hall and interact with students between classes, so they get to know me and my program. I bring toddlers from our preschool to different classes and show students what we’re doing. We plant things in our school garden with the agricultural science students, sing Christmas carols and go trick or treating around the school. When it’s time for our preschool graduation, the kids put on little caps and gowns and parade throughout the classrooms.”
These adorable toddlers and Paige’s powers of persuasion are hard to resist. And her program attracts about 132 students a year. “Students approach me all the time about taking my class and say, ‘That looks like fun.’ I’m happy that they’re eager to enter the field,” Paige says, “and I encourage them to explore the different things they can do with their training besides teaching in a classroom.” Some have gone on to attend college and learn to be child life specialists or help children with special needs. And Paige is thrilled to see them use the CDA as a stepping stone to grow in their profession.
“It is the teacher’s highest goal to see her students be successful in the field for which she’s prepared them,” as Paige explains. And her support for them doesn’t end at graduation. For example, she mentors a student named Kylie who’s now in college getting a child life specialist degree. “She graduated two years ago, and she still calls me for help when she doesn’t understand something,” Paige says. “We’ll talk the issue through, and I’m happy that I can help her.”
Kylie isn’t the only one who knows she can call on Paige for career tips or a shoulder to cry on. “Every year, the seniors give me the ‘motherly award,'” Paige says, “because they know that I’m always there for them.” Even after they’ve put the halls of Bolton High behind them, they can still depend on Paige for mentoring and motherly advice. “I tell them I’m an email, a text or a phone call away,” she says. “So, just reach out.”
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Vice President of Product
Mackenzie Pelland serves as Vice President of Product at the Council. In this role, she oversees the Council’s product strategy and portfolio, including credentialing programs, educational publications, professional development resources, and branded merchandise, ensuring offerings are sustainable and responsive to the evolving needs of early childhood educators and the broader early care and education field. Her work focuses on building scalable, user-centered products that strengthen quality and integrity across the Council’s credentialing, educational, and professional learning offerings.
Prior to this role, Mackenzie served as Director of ECE Observation Systems at the Council, where she oversaw the observation portion of the CDA® credentialing assessment process and led the ECE Observation Team. She also worked to support, refine, and strengthen the Professional Development Specialist community to better meet the needs of a diverse CDA® candidate population.
Before joining the Council, Mackenzie was Senior Director of Monitoring and Compliance Systems at Acelero Learning, where she led the development and execution of monitoring systems related to federal grant compliance, child care licensing, health and safety, incident management, and facilities compliance across Head Start programs nationwide. She also previously served as Program Accountability and Policy Implementation Manager at New York City’s Department of Education within the Division of Early Childhood Education.
Mackenzie is recognized as a credentialing specialist by the Institute for Credentialing Excellence. She holds a master’s degree in education policy from Teachers College, Columbia University, a Certificate in Education and Program Evaluation from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s degree in politics and education from Occidental College.
Vice President of Strategic Alliances
Elisa Shepherd is the Vice President of Strategic Alliances at the Council, where she leads initiatives to advance the Council’s mission and strategic plan through designing, managing, and executing a comprehensive stakeholder relationship strategy.
With over 25 years of experience in early childhood education (ECE), Elisa has dedicated her career to developing impactful programs, professional development opportunities, and public policies that support working families, young children, and ECE staff. Before joining the Council, Elisa held numerous roles within the childcare industry. Most recently, she served as Associate Vice President at The Learning Experience and as Senior Manager at KinderCare Education, where she influenced government affairs and public policies across 40 states.
Elisa’s commitment to leadership is reflected in her external roles on the Early Care and Education Consortium Board of Directors, the Florida Chamber Foundation Board of Trustees, and as the DEI Caucus Leader for KinderCare Education. She has been recognized as an Emerging Leader in Early Childhood by Childcare Exchange’s Leadership Initiative.
Elisa earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a focus on child development from Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA.
Chief Administrative Officer (CAO)
Janie Payne is the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for the Council for Professional Recognition. Janie is responsible for envisioning, developing, and executing initiatives that strategically manage talent and culture to align people strategies with the overarching business vision of the Council. Janie is responsible for driving organizational excellence through strategic talent practices, orchestrating workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management as well as a myriad of other Human Resources Programs. She is accountable for driving effectiveness by shaping organizational structure for optimal efficiency. Janie oversees strategies that foster a healthy culture to include embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of the organization.
In Janie’s prior role, she was the Vice President of Administration at Equal Justice Works, where she was responsible for leading human resources, financial operations, facilities management, and information technology. She was also accountable for developing and implementing Equal Justice Works Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy focused on attracting diverse, mission-oriented talent and creating an inclusive and equitable workplace environment. With more than fifteen years of private, federal, and not-for-profit experience, Janie is known for her intuitive skill in administration management, human resources management, designing and leading complex system change, diversity and inclusion, and social justice reform efforts.
Before joining Equal Justice Works, Janie was the Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer for Global Communities, where she was responsible for the design, implementation, and management of integrated HR and diversity strategies. Her work impacted employees in over twenty-two countries. She was responsible for the effective management of different cultural, legal, regulatory, and economic systems for both domestic and international employees. Prior to Global Communities, Janie enjoyed a ten-year career with the federal government. As a member of the Senior Executive Service, she held key strategic human resources positions with multiple cabinet-level agencies and served as an advisor and senior coach to leaders across the federal sector. In these roles, she received recognition from management, industry publications, peers, and staff for driving the creation and execution of programs that created an engaged and productive workforce.
Janie began her career with Verizon Communications (formerly Bell Atlantic), where she held numerous roles of increasing responsibility, where she directed a diversity program that resulted in significant improvement in diversity profile measures. Janie was also a faculty member for the company’s Black Managers Workshop, a training program designed to provide managers of color with the skills needed to overcome barriers to their success that were encountered because of race. She initiated a company-wide effort to establish team-based systems and structures to impact corporate bottom line results which was recognized by the Department of Labor. Janie was one of the first African American women to be featured on the cover of Human Resources Executive magazine.
Janie received her M.A. in Organization Development from American University. She holds numerous professional development certificates in Human Capital Management and Change Management, including a Diversity and Inclusion in Human Resources certificate from Cornell University. She completed the year-long Maryland Equity and Inclusion Leadership Program sponsored by The Schaefer Center for Public Policy and The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. She is a trained mediator and Certified Professional Coach. She is a graduate of Leadership America, former board chair of the NTL Institute and currently co-steward of the organization’s social justice community of practice, and a member of The Society for Human Resource Management. Additionally, Janie is the Board Chairperson for the Special Education Citizens Advisory Council for Prince Georges County where she is active in developing partnerships that facilitate discussion between parents, families, educators, community leaders, and the PG County school administration to enhance services for students with disabilities which is her passion. She and her husband Randolph reside in Fort Washington Maryland.
Chief Operations Officer (COO)
Andrew Davis serves as Chief Operating Officer at the Council. In this role, Andrew oversees the Programs Division, which includes the following operational functions: credentialing, growth and business development, marketing and communications, public policy and advocacy, research, innovation, and customer relations.
Andrew has over 20 years of experience in the early care and education field. Most recently, Andrew served as Senior Vice President of Partnership and Engagement with Acelero Learning and Shine Early Learning, where he led the expansion of state and community-based partnerships to produce more equitable systems of service delivery, improved programmatic quality, and greater outcomes for communities, children and families. Prior to that, he served as Director of Early Learning at Follett School Solutions.
Andrew earned his MBA from the University of Baltimore and Towson University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland – University College.
Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Janice brings more than 20 years of experience in accounting and strategic financial management, with an extensive background spanning global associations, nonprofits, and technology organizations. She most recently served as CFO/COO for a global association advancing women in commercial real estate. Prior to that, she was the CFO at Achieving the Dream, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting community college success, and Director of Finance at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Controller for two technology companies.
A Maryland-licensed CPA, Janice is deeply engaged in the profession through her service on the AICPA Governing Council and leadership roles with the CFO Leadership Council. In 2025, she was recognized as an AICPA Global Woman to Watch. She holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs & Public Policy from UC San Diego and a B.A. in International Affairs & Economics from The George Washington University, bringing both financial expertise and a global policy perspective to her work.
Janice’s journey is uniquely shaped by global and mission-driven experiences. Before transitioning into accounting, she spent a decade managing refugee programs in the United States and abroad, including roles with the International Rescue Committee and the Maryland Office for Refugees & Asylees. She has also lived and worked internationally in both Japan and Uganda.
Outside of work, Janice is a dedicated endurance athlete who completed a full Ironman triathlon in 2024, bringing the same discipline and determination to her personal pursuits as she does to her professional impact.
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