Mythbusting Early Childhood Education: How the Earliest Interactions Predict the Future and What’s at Stake Today

About the Presenters

With more than 30 years of leadership in early childhood education and policy, Dr. Dan Wuori is one of the field’s most respected bipartisan policy experts and a trusted voice on parenting and child development. His book, The Daycare Myth: What We Get Wrong About Early Care and Education (and What We Should Do About It), raises critical and costly disconnects between the science of early development and our approach to public policy. An accomplished writer, public speaker, and policy advisor, Dr. Wuori is the Founder and President of Early Childhood Policy Solutions and Strategic Advisor on Early Childhood at the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. A former kindergarten teacher and school district administrator, Dr. Wuori served as Deputy Director of South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness—the state’s comprehensive, public-private early learning initiative—from 2005-2018. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

Anna E. Williamson serves as Chief Program Officer at Agenda for Children in New Orleans, Louisiana, a 40-year-old child advocacy organization that works at the intersection of research, policy, and practice to advance a unified approach to improve the lives of young children, their families, and the early childhood systems that support them. Anna brings 20 years of leadership experience working in education nonprofits, family foundations, and schools. Prior to this, Anna was a school administrator and assessment coordinator at an early childhood program in Texas, and Associate Director at The CityBridge Foundation. Anna completed her M.A. in early childhood special education and human development at The George Washington University in 2013. She has served numerous committees, associations, and initiatives, and was a Pritzker Family Foundation Fellow representing Agenda for Children’s work nationally in the areas of early childhood education research, policy, and practice.

Bridget Hamre, Ph.D., is Co-founder and Board Chair at Teachstone and specializes in student-teacher relationships and classroom processes that promote positive academic and social development in young children. She has authored over 65 peer-reviewed manuscripts on these topics, documenting how educator-child relationships and teachers’ social and instructional interactions support children’s development and learning. Dr. Hamre is a co-author of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and, in partnership with Dr. Robert Pianta, led the use of CLASS to scale as an assessment and professional development tool nationwide. She collaborates with the Office of Head Start on their CLASS implementation as a part of the federal monitoring process and consults with numerous states on their Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. Dr. Hamre received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and her master’s degree and doctorate in clinical and school psychology from the University of Virginia.

Veronica A. Fernandez, Ph.D., has extensive experience in early care and education, both as a practitioner and researcher. She comes from a family of early educators; in fact, her mom owned and directed a preschool for over 25 years, where Dr. Fernandez worked while growing up. After obtaining a B.S. in education, specializing in varying exceptionalities and with a TESOL certification, she taught there as a preschool teacher and then served as a curriculum specialist. She is involved in and leads various advocacy efforts at the local, state, and national levels. Dr. Fernandez obtained an M.S. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology. Her research centers around understanding and improving the quality of early learning experiences of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. She is reliable on the Infant, Toddler, and PreK CLASS and is certified as an affiliate trainer. She is currently Teachstone’s Vice President of Content Development & Social Impact.