Planning for Financial Sustainability

02/27/2025
2:00 PM EST
02/27/2025
3:00 PM EST

Professional Development Webinars Research

Program: Planning for Financial Sustainability

Description: Join NHSA and the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity (CELFE) to learn about cost modeling for Head Start programs. Head Start programs across the country are facing increasing financial strain, and are focused on their long term financial security and sustainability. Particularly if you’re going through the change in scope process, cost modeling can help with the significant upcoming changes to your budget.

Join researchers from CELFE to learn about what goes into building a cost model, what factors your program might want to consider, and potential options for completing a long-term financial plan.

Learning Objectives: Understanding how cost modeling might benefit programs, learning from a real life example.

Planning for Financial Sustainability Presenters: Dr. Theresa Hawley and Sessy Nyman

Dr. Theresa Hawley is an expert in early childhood programs and systems that support the school readiness and social competence of young children in poverty. In her previous role as Director of Early Childhood Transformation, in partnership with the Governor’s Office, she directed the design of changes to Illinois’ funding mechanisms and governance structure for early childhood education in partnership with the Governor’s Office. In her time serving as First Assistant Deputy Governor for Education, she helped to coordinate education policy across the many state agencies that cover the education spectrum from birth through higher education.

Theresa has served in many roles in Illinois’ throughout the early childhood system. From 2017 to 2019, she was Senior Vice President for Policy and Innovation at Illinois Action for Children, where she led the agency’s efforts to link together program, research and public policy and advocacy work. From 2012 to 2015, Dr. Hawley served as the Executive Director of the Illinois Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development, where she led the development and implementation of the state’s Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge and Preschool Development Grant plans. Before joining the Governor’s Office, Theresa was the founding Project Director of Educare of West DuPage and a consultant to early learning programs and community collaborations across Illinois and nationally.

Theresa received her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Notre Dame and her Doctorate in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan.

 

Sessy Nyman is a seasoned nonprofit executive with 25+ years of experience in government and organizational leadership. She has worked in the field of early care and education, maternal & child health, community and stakeholder engagement and early childhood policy for more than 2 decades. She continues to lift-up the needs of young children and working families in her current role as Deputy Director of the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity (CELFE) at Northern Illinois University.

As Deputy Director, Ms. Nyman is a core part of the CELFE leadership team – building on her 20+ years working with child care providers, advocates, child care resource and referral agencies and with families across Illinois to move systems-change forward across the state. As a seasoned state lobbyist, Ms. Nyman understands the intricacies of policy and law, and works to center the needs of children, families and communities in her work while also balancing the real needs of the child care workforce. Ms. Nyman was pivotal in the state’s design and implementation and funding of early childhood collaborations, helped to establish the state’s Early Learning Council (2003), was the lead child care advocate that led to significant investments in access and quality expansion, and was the founder of the state’s Child Day Care Licensing Task Force. While working at the Illinois Department of Human Service (IDHS), Nyman was part of the design and implementation team during the COVID-19 pandemic that designed and oversaw strategies to support the child care workforce.

Ms. Nyman has presented locally and nationally on issues related to child care access and equity, family friend and neighbor care & parent choice, mixed delivery systems in ECEC, grassroots organizing and effective advocacy for ECEC, facilities improvements in child care, and many more topics related to early care and education.

Ms. Nyman holds her undergraduate degree in Government and International Studies and History from the University of South Carolina, and a Master of Science degree in Geosciences from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

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