Each Child. Every Community.

RALEIGH, NC—Twelve Smart Start leaders from across the state have been chosen to participate in a statewide early childhood leadership program. The Smart Start Leaders’ Collaborative is a new initiative funded by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

The program is an opportunity for Smart Start leaders to reflect, vision and plan for the future of North Carolina’s early childhood system. Participants will tackle difficult questions about how to best enhance the capacity of local partnerships and the Smart Start system to improve the health, education and well-being of all North Carolina’s young children birth to five.

Smart Start has seen its resources dwindle by $80 million in the past decade. At the same time, recent research by Duke University shows the more money invested in Smart Start, the better children do in school. Third-graders have higher standardized reading and math scores and lower special education placement rates in those counties that had received relatively more funding for Smart Start when these children were younger. Participants in the leaders collaborative will have to grapple with difficult questions of how best to continue to help children and families succeed in changing circumstances.

“We are investing in the Smart Start Leaders Collaborative because we know that Smart Start works and is a critically important resource for families with young children” said Kathy Higgins, President of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation.

The following Executive Directors were named to the Smart Start Leaders’ Collaborative:
• Denauvo Robinson, Albemarle Smart Start Partnership;
• Genevieve Megginson, Chatham County Partnership for Children;
• Eva Hansen, Partnership for Children of Cumberland County;
• Linda Leonard, Smart Start of Davidson County;
• Henrietta Zalkind, The Down East Partnership for Children;
• Sonia Gironda, Smart Start of Henderson County;
• Marta Koesling, Iredell County Partnership for Young Children;
• Steve Eaton, Partnership for Children of Lincoln & Gaston;
• Dawn Rochelle, Onslow County Partnership for Children;
• Jessica Lowery, Robeson County Partnership for Children;
• Heather Adams Kilpatrick, Rockingham County Partnership for Children; and
• Pam Dowdy, Wake County Smart Start.