Our dedicated board

Nathaniel Foote is Chairman of TruePoint, a consulting firm, and a founding Board member of the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. From 2014-2018, he served as Chairman of Activate Healthcare, a private equity-backed healthcare venture that nearly tripled in size during that period, while achieving industry leadership on patient outcomes, cost control and customer satisfaction. A former partner at Mckinsey & Co., Mr. Foote brings 35 years of experience helping organizations improve performance and accelerate growth through sharpened strategic direction, greater organizational alignment, and increased leadership team effectiveness.

Dr. Deborah Leong is a leading authority on the development of executive functions, Vygotskian approach, and early childhood assessments, and author of numerous books and articles on the topics. She is a Professor Emerita of Cognitive Developmental Psychology at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she taught for 36 years, and a former director of Auraria Early Learning Center. Dr. Leong developed the Tools of the Mind approach with Dr. Bodrova with whom she has written numerous books, articles, and educational videos on the Vygotskian Approach to Psychology and the development of play. She received a BA in Psychology from Stanford University; a MEd from Harvard University; and a PhD in Psychological Studies in Education and Developmental Psychology from Stanford University.

Ellen Galinsky is the chief science officer and executive director of Mind in the Making at the Bezos Family Foundation. She also serves as President of Families and Work Institute. She’s conducted research on child-care, parent-professional relationship, parental development, work-family issues and youth voice, including studies on how young people view their working parents, violence and their work in the future. She has found that what adults think that young people think and what they think are often quite different.

Ellen is the author of the best-selling Mind in the Making, more than 100 books/reports and 300 articles. Other highlights include serving as a parent expert in the Mister Rogers Talks to Parents TV series, as child care expert of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s TV series What Every Baby Knows and being the elected President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). In 2018, the Work and Family Researchers Network established the ongoing Ellen Galinsky Generative Researcher Award.

Ellen is currently at work on a book about adolescence called The Breakthrough Years. She began this journey by interviewing young people, asking them what they wanted to know about their own development, then interviewed and filmed over 40 researchers and neuroscientists on adolescent development in the U.S. and abroad. She and colleagues have also conducted two studies of a nationally representative group of adolescents, 9 though 18 and their parents, including one that is in the field right now about how they are doing during the pandemic and this period of racial justice unrest. They have also conducted a study of life skills in six states and Ellen spent the summer interviewing some of the adolescents and parents who participated in the survey. It has been an exciting journey!

Elsa Holguin is President and CEO of Denver Preschool Program (DPP), which champions, funds and increases access to quality preschool across the City and County of Denver. Previously, as senior program officer at Rose Community Foundation, she directed the Foundation’s Child and Family Development area, which supports the development and improvement of early childhood development and programs that help strengthen families. Ms. Holguín was appointed by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper for two terms as a commissioner and chair for the Early Childhood Leadership Commission. She currently serves on the board of Borealis Philanthropy and the Colorado Preschool Policy Leadership Committee. Former board member of Early Milestones Colorado, the Denver Opportunity Youth Initiative, and the national Early Childhood Funders Collaborative.

Jacqueline Jones has been a teacher, researcher, and policymaker. Currently, she is the President and CEO of the Foundation for Child Development. During the first term of the Obama administration, Dr. Jones served as Senior Advisor on Early Learning to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and as the country’s first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Early Learning in the US Department of Education. Prior to federal service she was the Assistant Commissioner for the Division of Early Childhood Education in the New Jersey State Department of Education, with responsibility for New Jersey’s Abbott Preschool Program. For over 15 years Dr. Jones served as a Senior Research Scientist at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton where she and her colleagues explored appropriate assessment of young children’s science and literacy development. Dr. Jones has been a Visiting Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and early in her career was a faculty member at Lehman College.

She is a member of the Advisory Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE) and served as a member of the National Academy of Science’s consensus committees that produced Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What and How and Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation. Dr. Jones attended Hunter College and earned both a masters and PhD from Northwestern University.

Tom Aaro is a business executive with over 35 years experience with leading Fortune 500 companies in marketing, sales, strategic planning and entrepreneurship. He has been a corporate executive with Kraft/General Foods, Cadbury Schweppes and Nestle. He was a partner and CEO of a marketing consulting/promotional agency (MGR-Marketing Drive) with numerous top consumer packaged goods clients, and the Founder/Managing Partner of BlueBlack, an agency that provided strategic consulting, promotional marketing and training. He has been serving on the Tools of Mind’s business advisory board for the past two years, assisting in the development of its positioning, strategic planning, marketing and sales strategies. Mr. Aaro has an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.S.B. in Business from the University of Minnesota.

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As the Chief Policy Officer, Miriam Calderón leads the development and implementation of ZERO TO THREE’s policy agenda, priorities, and strategies; oversees the Policy Center, which includes federal and state policy and advocacy; and serves as the principal spokesperson for the organization on public policy matters.

Calderón joined ZERO TO THREE after serving as a Presidential appointee in the Biden Administration in the role of deputy assistant secretary for early learning at the U.S. Department of Education. She also served as a political appointee in the Obama Administration, where she advised the White House on early learning policy at the Domestic Policy Council and at the Department of Health and Human Services. Calderón was appointed by Governor Kate Brown in 2017 to serve as the early learning system director for the state of Oregon, where she led an agency responsible for administration of child care, preschool, and home visiting programs and supports for the early childhood workforce. In this role, she oversaw implementation of the largest expansion of early childhood investments for young children and families in the state’s history.

Prior to Oregon, she served as the senior director of early learning at the Bainum Family Foundation, where she shaped a new $10 million philanthropic investment in a comprehensive birth-to-three system for the District of Columbia. She was also a senior fellow with the BUILD Initiative, leading BUILD’s work related to dual language learners and serving as a faculty member for BUILD’s Equity Leaders Action Network. Previously, Calderón served as director of early childhood education at District of Columbia Public Schools, where she oversaw Head Start and pre-kindergarten programs, including helping to implement universal pre-kindergarten. Calderón also served as associate director of education policy at the UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza), a Hispanic civil rights organization, where she focused on early education policy for Latinx, immigrant, and dual language learner children.

She began her career in early childhood as a mental health consultant in Head Start programs in Portland, Oregon. Calderón holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Delaware and a Master of Social Work degree from Portland State University.