“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow,” as Audrey Hepburn once said. And Nicole shows her own faith in the future at Happy Sprouts Family Child Care, where she plants the seeds of learning for young children. Some of the thoughts Nicole works to put across at her Baltimore, MD, home might seem a bit complex, but she knows “how to bring things to a child’s level.” For instance, she encourages children to always be curious about the world by talking about Albert Einstein, a man who never stopped asking questions. She teaches them chess because it helps their minds work, and they love it when she tells them stories about the different pieces. She also reads them children’s history books because she thinks “we can’t understand where we’re headed if we don’t understand where we’ve been.”
Of course, the past takes some curious twists and turns, and you can see this when you look at Nicole’s own path to the early childhood field. Her first career after high school was as a technician for the Baltimore subway, as she recalls. “From 2001 to 2013, I worked the night shift making sure there was power to the rails, walking the tracks to do inspections and fixing the switches.” It seems like it was a big switch for her to enter the early childhood profession, but she’d gotten a taste for the field while working as a volunteer.
“My best friend had opened a family child care center so she could stay home to raise her twins and help other parents,” Nicole says. “And I gave her a hand while I was working on the rails. When I got off my job at 7:30 a.m., I would go to her house to serve breakfast to the children and work with them during the morning shift. When it was time for their nap, I would finally go home and get some rest”—a taxing routine, Nicole admits, “but I loved being with the children.”
And she decided to switch gears in her career after she became pregnant with her first child in 2013. “I began checking out child care and couldn’t find a quality program for my daughter at a reasonable cost. After crunching the numbers, it made sense for me to stay home with my daughter and open my own family child care center,” Nicole explains. This has allowed her to home school her two children, now seven and eight years old. “My son and daughter are both reading above their grade level, and they also help me out at the child care by coloring with the children, putting out meals and doing other useful chores. I joke that I should put them on the payroll for what they do to help the young children bloom.”
Nicole has also blossomed in her career by earning a Child Development Associate® (CDA) credential. “I had heard about the CDA® and was thinking about getting it because I wanted to learn more and be the best I could be at my job,” she explains. “But I had pushed it aside until 2018 when I received a newsletter from the Maryland Family Network announcing a new CDA program. The Council for Professional Recognition and the Maryland State Department of Education were partnering to help cover the costs of gaining the credential.”
“Once I began, I enjoyed the CDA process and the chance to build a peer network,” Nicole says. “I took the classes with a cohort of other providers, and we all gave each other a lot of support. I contributed to the group by helping some of the women who weren’t computer savvy with the online forms. And I gave advice to a fellow CDA student who reached out to me and asked how she could open a family child care of her own.”
The first step to success in the field is to complete the CDA program, as Nicole advises all family child care providers. “The CDA helps you understand new concepts, take new approaches to child care, learn how to communicate better with children. And that makes the CDA an industry standard,” Nicole points out. “I wanted to have it for myself because it’s a way to show parents that I’m a quality provider who can offer the best of care for their youngsters.”
And Nicole helps children be their best by stressing the value of play. “My family child care is a play-based program,” Nicole says. “In play, a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself,” as famed psychologist Lev Vygotsky once pointed out. And Nicole loves that quote. “These children understand much more than we give them credit for when they are playing.”
Nicole is especially intrigued by what Vygotsky had to say because she’s now earning her bachelor’s in psychology with the goal of one day opening a child care center “Taking psychology courses allows me to understand more about both child and adult development,” she explains. “And that matters because in family child care you’re not only dealing with the children. You’re dealing with the parents as well.”
The moms and dads who bring their kids to Happy Sprouts need a lot of hand holding, as Nicole explains. “Right now, all of my children come from first-time parents. As a first-time parent, you’re very nervous and questioning everything you do. So, I offer myself after hours to give them support, and they call me for advice when they face a new issue with their child.”
The partnerships she forms with parents help the children take important steps, as Nicole is happy to see. “For example, one child was nonverbal,” she recalls, “and wouldn’t interact with any of the other children. But that changed after I worked closely with his parents for six months. That child is now flourishing, speaking in complete sentences and playing with the other children.”
That’s Nicole’s biggest success story, but it’s not the only one, she says. “Parents often come back to see me when their children are in grade school and rave about how well they’re doing. I’ve had moms and dads tell me that being in my child care really prepared their children for school and helped them excel. I’ve always strived to give the quality care I wanted for my daughter when I first started my child care over eight years ago. Now It gives me pride to know that I’ve nurtured the tender shoots of success for other kids at Happy Sprouts.”
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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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