Leadership Initiative Events

The Leadership Initiative welcomes Susan MacDonald as our speaker.

A culture of appreciation happens when everyone feels valued, respected, and seen for their unique strengths. This presentation will inspire you to incorporate easy-to-implement strategies for building positive relationships and bringing a renewed sense of joy to your school community!

This engaging session will explore positive communication techniques, the Appreciative Inquiry model, impactful frameworks, reflective exercises, and a team assessment form.

You will leave with a clear path to creating resilient relationships and a positive, supportive, respectful environment for children and adults. Participants will also receive a reflection guide with actionable tips, strategies, and resources to help you create a culture of appreciation!

This is a virtual event, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Studies indicate that pre-K students face expulsion at rates more than three times higher than K-12 students. How can we address this concerning statistic? Join us for a Leaders' Cafe to examine suspension and expulsion practices in early childhood education.

We've got an exciting update! A new virtual networking space is coming your way in Fall 2024. This September let's make lunchtime lively.

Pick up your favorite sandwich or salad and join us for stimulating conversation with other early childhood professionals. Our opening session is a brainstorming meeting where we'll discover the topics that intrigue you and plan ways to incorporate special guests and resources to enrich the experiences at our upcoming networking sessions. We can't wait to hear your ideas!

Join the Leadership Initiative and the Advocacy Institute for a special virtual conversation about advocacy. If you ever wondered about the policies that impact you, your team, and children and families in New York State, this is a great chance to learn more.

The Early Childhood Leadership Initiative is excited to introduce a new professional learning opportunity — the Learning Cafe! We’ll engage with videos, podcasts, TED Talks and other multimedia to explore a range of topics relevant to the early childhood community. We’ll provide you with resources and materials for discussion!

This event is for all those in Early Childhood Education who are interested in learning more about Early Head Start, and how to potentially start their own program/relationship. Prepare to hear from experienced individuals who are advocating and supporting children and families across New York State.

The Early Childhood Leadership Initiative is excited to introduce a new professional learning opportunity — the Leaders Café! We’ll engage with videos, podcasts, TED Talks and other multimedia to explore a range of topics relevant to the early childhood community. We’ll provide you with resources and materials for discussion!

Join us for an in-person opportunity to meet other leaders. Support, celebrate, and inspire each other as we relax with a cup of coffee.

The Leadership Initiative is pleased to bring you a valuable opportunity to develop your core business practices. Join Erica Chase-Gregory​, Regional Director of the Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale, as she leads a 3-part professional learning community where you will:  

• Build a strong business foundation
• Evaluate how legal structures and tax rules impact your business
• Calculate the true cost of care for each child in your program 
• Analyze market rate and what it means for your business
• Create a record keeping and budgeting system
• Identify community resources to support next steps in making informed business decisions 

Please note this event has a limited number of seats and is exclusive for family child care and group family child care Leadership Initiative members. 

Come out and meet your fellow leaders for great conversations. Make new friends and connect with those that inspire you. Support each other in a safe and supportive environment.

Join the Council for Professional Recognition for a virtual information session to learn more about becoming a Child Development Associate (CDA) Professional Development Specialist. 

If you enjoy mentoring, meeting new people, and observing educational environments, becoming a PD Specialist may be for you! PD Specialists use their expertise in early childhood education to assess CDA candidates' competencies and facilitate reflective conversations with candidates. PD Specialists receive an honorarium from the Council for each Verification Visit they conduct.

Join us to learn more! 

In our professional learning community, you will come together with other leaders in discussion of the habits and dispositions of resilient educators outlined in the book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elena Aguilar. 

Have you ever wondered if being an introvert is keeping you from becoming a great leader? Do you desire to grow in your career or business without compromising who you are?

At times it can feel like society labels people with introverted personalities as quiet, shy, reserved, or timid, while at the same time leaders are described as dominant, talkative, and outgoing.

But what if I told you that your introversion is your superpower? 

If you’re ready to start the journey to becoming a fearless leader, join our book group.

We are proud to welcome you to a follow up event with Imani Missouri on biases in early childhood. This event is intended as an opportunity to continue our conversation from our October event and deepen connections with others in the community.

At our October event, Imani led us in deepening our understanding of what unconscious bias is (and isn’t!) with an interactive session. We spoke in breakout rooms and as a large group about our experiences and ways to both identify and interrupt biases when we notice them happening. This space may have also included moments of discomfort and stretching ourselves with new ideas.

Our follow up event is by invitation only to members who attended our October Speaker Series event. We welcome you to join us to continue our conversations from October and reflect on what has come up since then. This time together will include experiences in small groups with participants from across NYS. Since we’ll have interactions in break out rooms, we encourage you to register if you are interested and able to attend the full event with your camera/microphone. We hope to see you there!

Come for coffee and make connections.

The Early Childhood Leadership Initiative is proud to present the Playmaker Project, facilitated by Ant Toombs Sr. The Playmaker Project provides “play-based, trauma-informed training and support for early childhood professionals.” Playmakers offer a framework that enhances existing priorities and increases social and emotional wellness among kids and staff.

The Leadership Initiative encourages leaders to join with an open heart and mind, learning techniques to bring optimism, joy, and healing to themselves, to staff, and to children.

Optimism matters. An optimistic disposition enables us through everyday and extraordinary struggles  to look for the goodness in ourselves, in others, and in the world around us. For professionals working with young survivors of trauma, optimism isn’t just a critical tool; it’s the pathway to healing for kids in need. This inspiring, interactive presentation helps individuals discover the power of optimism to create safe, joyful, engaging environments where kids can grow, heal, and learn. Using research, humor, and personal stories from 30+ years in the field, Playmaker Project Guides share how optimistic individuals can bring out the best in their students, colleagues, and leaders.

This panel event will highlight early childhood leadership roles for those considering the numerous opportunities in the field. Our panelists will each share their career pathways, how their role has an impact on our field, and the skills, credentials and dispositions that have helped them to be successful. 

Pedagogy is the “how” of teaching and learning. Connected to a vision about society, people, and knowledge, it is how we practice educating and supporting early childhood development. Join our event to learn about 5 approaches to early childhood pedagogy. 

We are proud to welcome you to our next Speaker Series event featuring Imani Missouri. She brings to us an opportunity to deepen our understanding of what unconscious bias is (and isn’t!) in an interactive session. Unconscious Bias is used often in our field, and together with Imani, we’ll talk about the differences between biases and racism. We’ll pause to reflect on our experience with the content and consider ways to attend to ourselves in these moments. This space may have moments where we sit bravely with productive, but transformative, discomfort.

All are welcome in this space. This time together will include experiences in small groups to learn with participants from across NYS. We aim for each participant to leave with the framework for a personal goal to increase their awareness of biases in their life and leadership role. Since this event includes interactions in small group break out rooms, we encourage you to register if you are interested and able to attend the full event. We hope to see you there!

The Southern Tier and the WNY Leadership Initiative have collaborated to present the upcoming Leadership Panel Discussion “Trauma Informed Supervision”.  Our expert panelist will share information to empower early childhood leaders in creating environments that support their staff and their needs. Our panelists will share their career pathway to their current work, along with understanding the effects of trauma and strategies for leaders to build resilience practices within.

As early childhood leaders and educators, you’ve probably noticed the “generation gap,” or how people born in different generations may think and behave differently — and you may have even experienced generational differences among your colleagues or early childhood educators at work. We invite you to join the Early Childhood Leadership Initiative for an illuminating conversation with Dr. Megan Gerhardt, an expert in intergenerational workplaces and the author of “Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce.” Dr. Gerhardt will discuss how to reflect on your own age-based biases, look beyond stereotypes associated with different generations and develop an understanding of why people who grew up in different times may behave in unique — and valuable! — ways. 

We are pleased to welcome our colleagues from NY Works for Children for another informative event to support leaders with the Aspire Registry workforce registry system. This event is a follow up to our July meeting. Several participants from our July meeting shared their interest in a second event with a focus on the professional development section of the Aspire Registry. Our August meeting will focus on this including information on how to create professional developments on the Aspire Registry, how to document professional development, and how to feature trainings on the Aspire Registry website. This is meeting is a statewide opportunity through the Leadership Initiative.

We offer special thanks to members who were able to participate in our July event and surveys. If you were not able to join the July meeting, you are still welcome to join our August session. Please email us if you'd like to see a copy of the recording. We hope to see you there! 

Come out and meet your fellow leaders for great conversations. Make new friends and connect with those that inspire you. Support each other in a safe and supportive environment.

We are pleased to welcome our colleagues from NY Works for Children this July for an informational event to support leaders with the Aspire workforce registration system. This will be an opportunity to learn more about why this system is a valuable tool for our field and how you can use it to support your work. We've designed the content for this session after hearing from Leadership Initiative members about their needs and curiosities. We hope you can join us! 

Our June Book Group features, 'Brave, Not Perfect" by Reshma Saujani. An opportunity to meet peers as we join together to discuss a book that is relevant to our work and home lives.

Join us for a cup of coffee and great conversations at our quarterly in person networking event. Bring your challenges and successes to support each other in this wonderful work.

Please join us at Brightside Up on March 22nd for our quarterly in-person networking group. All are welcome! We love meeting new leaders!

The Leadership Initiative is pleased to bring you this opportunity to develop your core business practices. Join Erica Chase-Gregory, Regional Director of the Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale, as she leads a 3-part professional learning community for family and group family providers.

Join other early childhood leaders as we identify strategies to use for a more productive and balanced life with healthy communication and established expectations. 

Join your peers for great conversations. Share your challenges and successes.

Networking groups provide an open space for early childhood leaders to join together to collaborate by sharing thoughts, successes and challenges.

What's on your mind? Bring your wonderings and connect with your peers.

Meet your peers and engage in great conversations at our new evening groups

Join our celebration!  Coffee and Connections just for you!

Courageous Leadership: "Daring Greatly and Rising Strong at Work."

An important role of any leader is growing and nurturing the development of up-and-coming leaders within the field. Leaders with innovative succession planning practices cultivate a new generation of leaders by strategically creating opportunities for employees to explore leadership responsibilities. Hear from a panel of experienced early childhood leaders on how to:

· Plan leadership development for the next generation

· Establish a strategic process for succession planning

· Leverage succession planning as a staff retention tool

· Explore the technical and adaptive challenges of succession planning

Please join us to engage in great conversations with other early childhood leaders in our area. 

Join us! We are honored to host Rhian Evans Allvin for this special state-wide edition of the Leadership Initiative Speaker Series. Come to learn about Rhian's exciting journey as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). She served the NAEYC community for over a decade, supporting an increase in membership and bringing strong leadership to the policy advocacy arm of NAEYC's work. During Rhian's tenure, NAEYC released three position statements on equity in early childhood education and convened the Power to the Profession initiative. We'll have the opportunity to learn more about Rhian's leadership philosophy, lessons learned, and her insight on our field at this event. We hope to see you there!  

What's on your mind? Come chat with peers and examine your wonderings together.

Join us for an evening book discussion to feel inspired as we examine the compilation of 8 individual stories of empowerment. Free books will be sent to participants. 

Join our monthly networking events for great conversations and connections.

Meet with us to learn more about the Leadership Initiative and how you can join us to engage with peers and develop professionally.

Connect, Collaborate, Build Communities

The Capital District Leadership Initiative is pleased to bring you this opportunity for you to develop your core business practices. Join Erica Chase-Gregory, Regional Director of the Small Business Center at Farmingdale, as she leads a 3-part professional learning community geared for home-based childcare programs.

The Capital Region is pleased to bring you this opportunity to develop your core business practices. Join Erica Chase-Gregory, Regional Director of the Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale, as she leads this 3-part learning community.

The Leadership Initiative has officially launched in the Capital District region! Come to one of our virtual information sessions to learn how the Leadership Initiative can support you in your work as a leader of early childhood programs in our region. All current and aspiring leaders are welcome to attend. Learn about our various professional development opportunities, resources to support you, as well as how to stay connected and become a member. The first 10 individuals to complete a Leadership Initiative profile will receive a free NAEYC membership (details will be shared at the info session!)  Also please come to share with us your unique perspectives and needs as a leader and which supports would be most helpful to you. 

We welcome Terrance Lee to join us and speak to his work on core leadership principles that can enhance our stance as leaders. He will share thoughtful insights on being identified as an "introvert" and the misconception that this attribute prevents one from becoming an "ideal" leader. Participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their stance as a leader, hear about principles that can enhance their daily practice in a leadership role, and learn about the inner power introverts bring to every team.

The Institute is hosting a professional development offering: Introduction to the Revised New York State Early Learning Guidelines: A Child Development Resource for Educators of Children Ages Birth Through Eight. These sessions are designed specifically for Directors and other leaders of early childhood programs. This professional development session will provide an overview of the shifts within this new and improved version of the New York State Early Learning Guidelines. A specific focus will be provided on utilizing this resource as a leader in your program and supporting its use among your staff. 

Choose one of the session dates and times that works for you. 

Join us for this special two-part Leadership Speaker Series event, featuring Abby Thorman.

"Making Impact: Strengthen Your Voice, Your Message, and Your Story-telling"

As professionals and leaders we have responsibility to use our experience and knowledge to inform and influence others about appropriate practices and the needs of the early childhood field (Core Body of Knowledge 6.6).
Abby will explore and help attendees understand the skills and components of effective storytelling for early childhood advocacy. Part 1 on May 26th will cover crafting effective messages, using those messages for advocacy, and strategies to achieve power in numbers. Join us again on June 3rd in an interactive session with Abby to hone those message-making skills with opportunities for feedback and strategizing.

Connect with other leaders at our in-person networking space. Enjoy coffee and treats as you mingle. Great conversations are guaranteed.