Scaling Up the CDA: Q&A with Council Leaders
What inspired you to launch the Reimagine project? Dr. Calvin E. Moore, Jr. (CM), Chief Executive Officer: I joined the Council when we were in the middle of the pandemic and needed to rebuild the...
“If you have support and people believing in you, you can do anything,” says Rory Sipp, Senior Vice President of Acelero Learning, the largest provider of Head Start services in Nevada. He saw how true this was after an anxious mom brought her little girl to one of his centers. “The child was in a wheelchair,” Sipp recalls, “and mom had never let the girl out of her sight. Yet I managed to ease some of her deep concerns about parting with her child for an extended span of time. Then when the mom was leaving the building, I told her, ‘You can take this wheelchair with you. We will not be using this wheelchair because I am going to give your little one all the OT and PT support she needs.’ By the time that little girl left our program, she was able to walk with assistive devices from her mother’s arms to the classroom. And after several years, she was able to walk without any assistive devices at all.”
Sipp was determined to take that small girl from a bad place to a good place because he knows what it’s like to struggle as he did while growing up in Alabama. And he knows that Head Start can help, as it did when his mom and dad divorced 43 years ago. “The income went out of the household,” he says, “so my mom enrolled me in the local Birmingham Head Start.” Sipp would do the same thing when he was a 17-year-old college student and had his own 10-month-old son. “My mom and my grandma who were in the house with me passed away in a span of a few months, so I had to quit school and take on a full-time job. I needed child care and I didn’t know where to turn until a friend who worked with Head Start reminded me about the program.”
Head Start gave Sipp’s son a good start in life, and it also launched Sipp in his career. “They encouraged me to join a policy council that helped review decisions about the program,” he recalls. “It helped me find my voice after all the tragedies I’d been through—losing my mom, losing my grandma, even living in my car at one point. So, I gave my voice to Head Start via the policy council and then they started reminding me about job opportunities. Dr. Calvin E. Moore, Jr., my longtime mentor and now my best friend, gave me my first job as a teacher’s assistant.” And in years to come, Sipp would go on to become a trainer, administrator and content area expert focused on disabilities and mental health. While working in various Head Start programs, he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in special education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, along with a certification in applied behavior analysis.
When Sipp moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he still lives, the first thing he did was go to the local Head Start and fill out an application. They hired him as a center director, and he flourished as he moved up the ranks to his current position as Acelero’s Senior VP. He now provides support to over 6,000 children and close to 1,500 staff members. “I’m the leader of one of the largest Head Start programs in the country,” he says, “and my success is testament to the fact that Head Start works.”
Sipp is also determined to make it work for other young learners, he explains, because “my job is to serve every single child, regardless of color, culture or background. So, my staff and I are committed to blowing up the achievement gap through innovation. We have our own family engagement tool. We have our own curriculum, and we have rigorous systems that drive us to the next level of what’s possible for children.”
Acelero Learning also makes extensive use of data to inform learning. “We collect child assessment data, parent engagement data and data on how teachers are interacting with children,” Sipp explains. “We need to determine where we should open up a school, what needs a community has and whether what we’re doing fulfills our goal to build a better future for children and families. We need to know how and where to teach to get the best results because Head Start dollars are precious.”
So are the lives Sipp serves, especially those of children with special needs. “ECE special ed is part of my background,” he says, “and it’s still my passion. I believe special needs kids are a group people sometimes don’t know a lot about, and those children tend to be set apart. Most people don’t want to spend a lot of time with them, but those are precisely the children I tend to gravitate toward most. The question I ask is what can this little one do because that is the foundation to teach them other skills needed to be successful not only in the classroom, but in life.” And Sipp’s own life has raised his commitment to support those who are different. Both his cousin and his nephew are on the autism spectrum, he explains. “So now it’s a personal thing for me.”
He also feels a strong connection to small boys of color, who are too often misdiagnosed as having special needs. “I’m from the deep South,” he explains, “and there’s a lot of work to be done in correctly assessing people of color, especially little boys. Sometimes when you see overreporting of children of color it’s because people don’t understand who they are. You need to understand more than what you see on the outside. You also need to know the background and culture that children bring to an early childhood classroom. If you don’t know those things about children, you can’t teach them. So, one of the requirements of Head Start is that we staff our programs with people who reflect that community of families and children who they serve.”
Another requirement for staff is that they earn their Child Development Associate® (CDA) credential. “The CDA®,” he says, “is the baseline for a lot of our positions, especially our Early Head Start positions. After staff members earn their CDA, we encourage them to go on for their associate degree and higher,” as Sipp himself has done. “When I left college at 17, Head Start gave me the funding and release time to go to the local community college and earn my CDA. It was the first credential I ever earned, and I’m still proud of getting it though I completed my doctoral studies in 2010.”
He has inspired other staff members to use the CDA as a building block for advancement. And he’s especially proud of one staff member who started out as an assistant teacher with a CDA. “She had made up her mind that she would never step foot in a classroom after graduating high school,” Sipp recalls, “but I worked closely with her and coached her along the way. Not only did she earn her AA, but she also got her BA. Then she moved all the way through the organization to become one of the inclusion specialists at Acelero Learning. Now she’s one of our shining stars as an employee.”
Skilled and committed staff members like her helped Acelero children make significant gains despite the pandemic. According to a study by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, three- and four-year-old Acelero students made significant gains in the domains of print knowledge and numeracy during the pandemic. Infants and toddlers made significant gains in developing language. And the reason for this striking success, Sipp explains “is that we are committed to delivering high-quality experiences and education to children, whatever the circumstances might be.”
So Acelero never stopped moving during the pandemic, Sipp says. “I am so proud of the work we did despite COVID: sending meals out to our families, providing diapers, getting technology out to families so they could put their children on virtual platforms. We have achieved everything provided for by our Head Start dollars.” And Acelero also made innovations so children could keep on learning, Sipp explains. “At first, we tried to replicate the classroom experience as much as we could, but after a couple of months, we redesigned our program to focus more on the individual child and individual family. We listened carefully to what family members wanted and provided them with specific resources for their specific child.”
Sipp values the viewpoints of parents though most of them are poor and even homeless. “I was once sleeping in my car, so I’ve learned to be humble,” he says. “Sure, when I first entered this work, I applied what we did with parents from a deficit perspective. As an educator you tend to approach parents with the mindset that you’re poor, so let me help you, let me fix you. But over time, I realized that didn’t help my parents. So now I believe that when parents enroll their child in our program we’re partners. We have the same hopes and dreams for a child, so let’s work together to do what’s best for the child.”
This approach reflects his creed: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And it’s one of the life lessons he passes on in his book A Psalm to My Sons. “It’s a self-help guide that puts together my life lessons,” he says. “It describes losing my mom and grandma, then parenting at an early age. It talks about spirituality and my conviction that we are all here for a reason. It also explores my conviction that your job should be about your passion, so you never feel like you’re working a day in your life,” he explains. And most of all, the book conveys Sipp’s wish to help young men avoid some of the roadblocks he faced as he went from a bad place to the good place where he is now.
It was clear Sipp had come out ahead in 2012 when he was honored by President Barack Obama’s administration as a White House “Champion of Change” for his service to the most vulnerable citizens of our nation. “My accomplishments show that you can come from the deep South, face poverty and challenges, and still grow up to succeed. Even if people limit your options, you can do whatever you want so long as you apply yourself in the right way,” he says.
And at Acelero Learning, Sipp is determined to help every young child also do whatever they want when they grow up. This is not just his job. It’s his passion, as he explains. “I do this work because I love it, and I want to make a major impact on children, families and staff.”
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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 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)
Jan Bigelow serves as Chief Financial Officer at the Council and has been with the organization since February of 2022.
Jan has more than 30 years in accounting and finance experience, including public accounting, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She has held management-level positions with BDO Seidman, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Communities In Schools, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and American Humane. Since 2003, Jan has worked exclusively in the non-profit sector where she has been a passionate advocate in improving business operations in order to further the mission of her employers.
Jan holds a CPA from the State of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lycoming College. She resides in Alexandria VA with her husband and dog.
Vice President of People and Culture
Janie Payne is the Vice President of People and Culture 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.
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