Setting Early Childhood Education Career Goals
SPONSORED BLOG The task of sitting down and writing out all of your early childhood education career goals can feel daunting. Where should you start? How far in the future should you plan? And, once...
Gina Pope ventures boldly to places where most of us wouldn’t dare go. Her idea of a good time is to set off for the wilderness of Alaska and stay there for weeks at a time. She and her partner spend three days boating and camping along a river to reach their cabin in the woods. Once arrived, they spend their days hunting moose and trekking through the pristine woods where Gina spent her youth.
She brings this same sense of adventure to her work as a coordinator and developmental specialist for the Tanana Chiefs Conference Infant Learning Program in Fairbanks. “I travel great distances,” she says, “and get on small planes to serve a rural region of Alaska that’s about 400 by 600 square miles. The Alaskan Native families I serve have children under three with a medical condition or marked developmental delay. My team members and I provide the children with the occupational therapy, physical therapy and psychological services they need. We also work with parents on finding the best ways to help their children advance and grow.”
It’s important to partner with the parents, Gina points out, because she can only visit each family four times a year since it takes a long time—often as much as a day—to reach the remote villages where they live. “When I leave,” she says, “we keep in touch by phone, Skype or Zoom, but the families’ lives go on the way they always have. “My visit only lasts a few hours, and when I get back on the plane, boat or snowmobile, the family is still there carrying on the day-and-night business of raising a child.”
And the families have different approaches toward the challenge of raising a child with special needs, as Gina has seen. “Some families are convinced the child will outgrow the difficulties they face. Others are concerned about having their child talk, read and interact with others. And they decide right away that the child will need services in the long run, especially if there’s a diagnosed medical condition. The families I work with are so diverse that I must pay close attention to how they view the child. How I interact with a family affects what activities they engage in and whether they are receptive to my suggestions. In many cases, the children I serve grow up to blend into the community where they live, be accepted and do all the traditional tasks that come with living in a rural village.”
Part of Gina’s success with kids comes from her gift for connecting with families. The parents like the way she plays with the children, encourages learning, and gives them insight into their child’s behavior, she explains. It also helps that Gina is an Alaskan Native and knows about her people’s strengths and way of life “Packing water, obtaining seasonal food from the river or wild, and keeping a vegetable garden consume much of their day. But they also make time for village events like fiddle dancing, a type of square dancing that Gina also loves. “I know the rhythm of rural life because I grew up in a village much like those where these families live.” That’s where her career working with families and children began over three decades ago.
“There was an opening for a tribal villages service worker, and it gave her the opportunity to do home visits and provide counseling for parents of children from birth to five years of age. “While I was doing the visits, I learned about the CDA® and earned my credential in 1994,” she recalls. It was an achievement that would inspire her to go on for her bachelor’s degree and master’s in early childhood education. “I wanted to understand more about what happens in early childhood, know how to help children excel and guide parents in seeing the world through the eyes of their child.”
She went on to use her knowledge after moving to Dillingham, a fishing port in Alaska, and working for Head Start. She would proceed to become a Head Start director, early intervention teacher and college instructor before taking on her current job. She also serves as a PD Specialist for the Council, a role that gives her the chance to see more of her large and diverse state. “I have to be creative to get to the far-flung places where candidates need the services I provide,” she explains. So, she’s travelled by snowmobile and boat, traversed rivers and rough, frozen terrain.
She does it because she knows how much the CDA matters. “The CDA helps candidates think about what they are doing and exposes them to the key theories of early childhood practice. It also makes them see the major impact that early learning makes on the rest of people’s lives,” she says. And earning her own CDA led Gina to make professional development a goal for herself and other folks.
She helps to bring out the candidates’ best by doing assessments in their native tongues, including Inuit and Yup’ik. “Though most of the candidates know English,” she explains, “they’re more at ease when the PD Specialist speaks the language they grew up with and the one they use in the classroom,” especially now that language immersion programs are becoming more common. There’s an ongoing effort to revive indigenous tongues as part of a campaign to keep Alaska’s native culture alive, despite the ravages on it that time has wreaked.
“The decline of native culture has a long history that goes back to the westernization of Alaska,” she explains. “Children were taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools where they would absorb the dominant culture. Alaskan Natives were barred from entering many buildings, and they weren’t allowed to use the languages they spoke at home.” Yet Alaskan Natives have survived these ordeals, she says, because they’re “a strong, resilient people.”
They need to be because they’re still facing new dangers that threaten their way of life and the land they’ve lived on for thousands of years. “Trawlers are scooping up the salmon that provide the main source of food for many tribal villages,” she says. “Mining and drilling companies now invade the wilderness. There’s an influx of folks who don’t respect our way of life. And big companies are putting up buildings that mar our beautiful pristine land.”
Gina thought of the wide-open spaces she comes from when she went to Washington, DC, to serve on the CDA Advisory Committee at the Council. “I was on the Metro and surrounded by more people than live in some of the villages where I work,” Gina recalls. “Yet it felt lonely because no one was connected in the teeming crowd, unlike the villages where I work. It’s easy to build connections there,” Gina says. So, she feels close to the families she serves.
And her concern for them led her to serve on the committee, she explains. “The rural areas of Alaska are underrepresented in the early childhood community, and most people don’t know much about our interests and needs. It’s like our children and families are invisible to the nation. Yet we’ve been here for thousands of years, and for people not to see us is atrocious,” Gina says. So, she’s determined to speak out boldly on their behalf. By helping them, she benefits, too, according to Chief Seattle, a great Native leader. “All things are connected like the blood that unites us,” he said. “We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
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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.
Chief Operations Officer
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
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.
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