Marsanell helped put together a performance for parents while she was teaching four-year-olds at ABC Daycare in Texas. “We wanted all the children to shine, and we spent a lot of time having them practice dances and songs,” Marsanell recalls. The highlight of the event was when the entire class got up and performed to Whitney Houston’s Billboard hit, “The Greatest Love of All.” In the opening lyrics Houston sings, “I believe the children are our future / Teach them well and let them lead the way.” They’re words that have inspired Marsanell throughout her career teaching every age group from preschool to college. As director of the education preparation program at Wiley University in Marshall, Texas, she’s committed to helping students fulfill their hopes and dreams.
She knows the importance of the role teachers play in helping students succeed because she attributes her own success to two professors at Texas Southern University who demanded that she do her best. “One day, I was walking in the hall, and they confronted me for missing classes and failing to be serious about my studies,” Marsanell recalls. “Those professors sternly told me they expected more from me, and at first, I was taken aback because no one had spoken to me that way before. But the professors made me reflect and realize that they cared enough about me to hold me accountable for not fulfilling my potential.”
Marsanell went on to graduate college and earn two graduate degrees in education, a field she had learned to love from her mother. “My mom was a committed preschool teacher who would do anything to help the families and children she served,” Marsanell says. “For example, she once had two children live in our home for three weeks when their mother was in the hospital and the children didn’t have any place to stay. She also taught a child who the public school district refused to serve since his ADHD made him too disruptive,” Marsanell says. Seeing how her mom would just keep going to meet the community’s needs inspired Marsanell as she went on to become an elementary school teacher and then an educational diagnostician.
“I did home visits to assess children with developmental delays and determine where they were falling behind,” Marsanell explains. It wasn’t easy for her to give parents the diagnosis that their child had an actual delay, but she found satisfaction in helping the children take small steps to advance. “When you help a child who doesn’t speak use words and complete a short sentence, it makes a big difference for a family,” Marsanell says. “Knowing that you played a role in helping the child progress is also great, and that’s a feeling I try to convey to the students I’ve taught at Wiley University since 2024.”
Marsanell wants to inspire people to enter and stay in the early learning field because she knows how much we need more teachers. Last year she explored new ways to expand their ranks when she did a fellowship with the Black Caucus of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and Tougaloo College in Mississippi. “As part of the fellowship, we had to pick a topic based on the research and interactions we had in the previous year,” Marsanell says. “I picked professional development and looked at ways we could give people a flexible, streamlined path to becoming early childhood teachers.” The result was a new program that just launched in August.
With Marsanell’s input, Wiley University is offering the Leading Educators through Accelerated Pathways or LEAP program. It’s an online program designed for working adults who have 24 credits but no degree. The LEAP program features five-week accelerated semesters in Wiley’s adult degree-completion format. The program allows the students to get their bachelor’s degree in conjunction with their CDA® in less than the standard four years, as Marsanell explains. “The CDA became part of the program because we wanted our students here at Wiley to walk across the stage at graduation with a marketable credential,” she says. “We are opening doors for passionate, driven individuals to become the highly qualified teachers our children deserve, faster than before. This is not just a program. It is our commitment to the future of education.”
As a key part of the program, Wiley is targeting career changers, Marsanell explains. And she knows from her own experience that it can be a bit daunting to change the kind of work you do. “I was nervous at first, when I went from working with young children to teaching older students,” Marsanell admits. “I expected the college students to be much more critical. But I came to realize that the key to helping students succeed, whatever their age, is building relationships. If students know you care for them, they’ll perform better. So, my door is always open for students to come in and chat.”
In the course of her discussions with students, Marsanell has also shared the challenges that she had while in college. “I’ve found that talking about my life experiences makes an impact on adults. They realize that I’m not just talking the talk. I’ve walked the walk. The students come to see that I succeeded despite an unpromising start, and they can, too.”
Wiley University shares Marsanell’s sense of commitment to students, as she explains. “We have an online early warning system that flags students who don’t appear to be performing as well as they should, and all the students have a success coach. The coach contacts the students every week by Zoom to see how they’re doing and find out what’s going on if they’re not turning in all their assignments. The university wants to maintain a strong relationship with students, so it can catch them before they falter in the program.”
As part of preserving these bonds, Wiley will also offer its online LEAP students the opportunity to do a residency or preparation work on campus “We don’t want LEAP to be a program where we never meet the students. At Wiley, we look on all students as part of our family,” Marsanell says, “so I try to go the extra mile to help the students I serve.”
If Marsanell hears from a success coach that a student is struggling, she’ll reach out to the student. “I’ll send the student a text to find out how I can support them,” she says. “I’ll suggest we meet weekly if they’re having trouble understanding the content of a course. If they just need a quiet place to work, I’ll suggest they come and study in my office.” And most of the students are grateful for the support. But if students don’t accept the help at first, Marsanell won’t give up on trying to get the students to fulfill their potential.
“Last year, I had a student named Perry who didn’t respond to my texts and didn’t come to the meetings I’d scheduled with her,” Marsanell recalls. “I had to track her down all year until she finally told me she had some trust issues. It turned out that there had been a lot of turnover among Perry’s professors, and she didn’t expect me to be there for her either. But I persisted in trying to build a relationship with Perry, and she apologized in the end for giving me a hard time. Perry did the work she needed to graduate from college, and she has been offered four positions teaching children,” Marsanell says.
“I like to think that the relationship I managed to build with Perry played a role in her success,” Marsanell adds. “I’m convinced that it’s important to make a personal investment in students like those two professors did in me back at Texas Southern University. I want to carry on their torch,” Marsanell says. And her sense of commitment is not only helping students build careers in education. Marsanell is boosting the ranks of teachers who can build the future for children.
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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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