“You have to take advantage of opportunities as new doors open,” Rebecca likes to tell her CDA students at Columbus Downtown High School. “You might think you’re on one path, but other paths open.” And they did for her during 26 years in the teaching profession. She taught at a public preschool while taking courses in reading education. Her long-term plan was to keep teaching small children, but she had to switch gears when her preschool closed, and new prospects arose.
“The high school needed a reading specialist,” she recalls. “So, I wound up teaching middle and high school students who had trouble with their reading skills, and then there was an opening for an education instructor after a teacher retired.” She’s been doing that for ten years, and the last five have included training students to earn their CDA after Ohio made it a requirement for center staff. “I ended up switching jobs a number of times,” Rebecca explains, “to go where there was a need.”
But one thing has stayed the same in Rebecca’s long, wide-ranging career: she’s always wanted to be a teacher. “When I was a little girl,” she recalls, “I would play school and make my younger siblings be my students. Then when I actually went to school, I often served as a teacher’s helper. I was just always very interested in helping other people learn, and my sense of calling led me to attend a career center for education when I was in high school. Then I worked in a preschool during college and grad school, so I was always a nontraditional student.”
And she’s not exactly a traditional teacher when you consider just how far she goes to help her students succeed. Besides teaching her regular classes, she keeps in frequent touch with her students online, has regular one-on-one meetings with them, and discusses her students’ progress with their parents. She also gives her students the moral support they need when they’re feeling uncertain about their abilities and their achievements. “I tell them you don’t compare how you’re doing with someone else in the class. You measure your achievements by looking at where you are, what you’re struggling with and where you want to get to by the end of the week. It’s about having them progress along their own path.”
A credential can give them a way ahead, as she shows Downtown High students each year when she’s recruiting for her CDA program. “We make visits to eighth-grade and tenth-grade classes. We film promotional videos and I do a PowerPoint presentation with a lot of images. I talk about how the CDA will help you get college credit, increase your chance of employment and help you get paid a higher wage. I also talk about how you can use the credential to open your own preschool and that’s another selling point. Many Downtown students are very entrepreneurial, especially the guys. They often plan on coaching sports, so I get them interested in the CDA program by explaining to them that most coaches are teachers.”
The young men who do enroll in the program sometimes change their career plans and decide to stay in the early childhood classroom after starting their CDA. “When I tell them that they have to work with infants and toddlers, they’re not especially excited,” Rebecca wryly admits. “Then they find themselves in a center with these adorable, little toddlers all over them and they’re thrilled to see ‘these kids really like me.’ It turns out they have a chemistry with young children, and that’s what it takes to succeed in the ECE field. I can see the students, whether boys or girls, who have that parenting instinct the first time I take them to meet a group of young children. And I think people who stay in the field just have this natural calling.”
Not everyone’s got it and each year Rebecca has a couple of students who realize “this job just isn’t for me.” So, Rebecca works with the school district to put them on another career path, as she explains. “Sometimes you have to get to know them and let them tell you what they’re thinking and feeling. It can be a lot of work to help them transition out of ECE and find a different program, but I feel a sense of commitment to help them. I realize they’re on a journey—like I’ve been during my own career—and they’re trying to figure things out. So, when they decide to leave the program, I tell them, ‘It’s a good thing you learned this now instead of in college and then found yourself stuck with an education degree you didn’t want to use.'”
Meanwhile, most of her CDA students are eager to work in the ECE field, Rebecca explains, but struggle with some roadblocks as they try to reach their goal. “I usually have at least three students with learning disabilities each year, and I also tend to have a couple of students for whom English is a second language. That can change the way I teach them because they’re learning to read English while they’re learning about early childhood and the CDA as well.”
As Rebecca assists them, her expertise as a reading specialist comes in handy. “I use the techniques of enriched reading, which basically means finding something that a learner really wants to read. In some cases, I have my students select a children’s book they like,” she says, “and have them practice reading it with me before they go and read it to the young children.” It’s a sequence of steps that helps students gain both the confidence and reading skills they need, Rebecca explains. And she took a similar approach with a boy whose goal was to fill out job applications on his own. “We practiced reading and filling out job applications all the time,” she recalls. “It helped him work with more purpose and wound up improving his reading skills all around.”
Rebecca is proud of how she helped students like this progress, but her greatest success came with Skye, a special needs student who’d always struggled in English class and didn’t expect to go to college. “She could verbalize what she wanted to say but had trouble writing it down,” Rebecca says, and this posed a problem when Skye had to write her CDA Competency Statement. “So, I would have her tell me out loud what she wanted to say, and I would write it down. Then I would read it back to her and tell her, ‘I’m writing the words, but it’s all your work.'”
Rebecca’s warm words of reassurance—and her patient help—increased Skye’s confidence and skills so much that she did manage to get her CDA. She’s now working with infants and toddlers while attending community college and working on her associate degree. “It’s taking her a little longer to get her degree than it does the average student since she only takes one or two classes at a time,” Rebecca says, “But she’s getting better at her studies all the time and tells me I changed her life.” Rebecca opened a door of opportunity for Skye that she never dreamed she could go through.
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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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