Former President & CEO, Child Trends

Carol Emig has spent her career at the intersection of public policy, programs, and research related to children and youth. From 2006 to 2023, she served as President & CEO of Child Trends, the nation’s leading research center on children and youth.

Carol focuses on impact – ensuring that research and evidence are central to public policy and programmatic decisions that affect children, youth, and their families. Her work at the national and state levels has had lasting impact on child poverty, early childhood, child welfare, and racial equity.

Child Trends’ research portfolio spans every stage of child and youth development, from early childhood to the transition to adulthood, and includes all the major public systems serving children and families. Under Carol’s leadership, Child Trends added robust research areas in child welfare, poverty, and trauma; launched the Child Trends Hispanic Institute, now the nation’s leading research center on Latino children; created new research areas on Black and Indigenous children; expanded its capacity to support policymakers with data and research; and grew its communications function. It also increased the number of staff more than fivefold, from 50 to more than 250.

From 2002 to 2006, Carol was Executive Director of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, a blue-ribbon panel of child welfare experts. Many of the Commission’s recommendations were enacted by Congress or adopted by state agencies and state Supreme Courts. Her other professional experiences include Deputy Director of the National Commission on Children, a bipartisan Congressional-Presidential panel; Senior Associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy; director of a state children’s advocacy organization; and, early in her career, research assistant to First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Carol chairs the Boards of Directors of Raising a Reader and the Children’s Chorus of Washington. In the past, Carol has served on the Boards of the Stoneleigh Foundation and Reach Out and Read and as an advisor to the Board of Venture Philanthropy Partners.

Carol has an undergraduate degree in international relations from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she was a Kennedy Fellow and recipient of the Littauer Prize for Distinguished Writing in Public Policy.

She and her husband, Michael Durst, are the proud parents of two daughters.

Interim CEO, CFLeads

Sterling Speirn is the Interim CEO of CFLeads, a national organization dedicated to building the capacity of community foundations to provide dynamic and robust leadership around key issues in their communities, including racial equity and economic mobility. Previously he served as the sixth President & CEO for the Maine Community Foundation. Before that he was CEO and Senior Fellow at the National Conference on Citizenship in Washington, DC.

From these philanthropic platforms, Sterling has been a long-time champion of early childhood development and early childhood literacy as essential elements for interrupting poverty and promoting racial equity. He has also supported efforts to promote civic and community engagement as well as service and volunteering as key strategies for revitalizing our democratic culture and practices.

At PCF he founded the Center for Venture Philanthropy, and launched the Raising a Reader take-home book program which today operates at more than 3,000 sites serving more than 135,000 children annually. Also during this time, Speirn taught a seminar on philanthropy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and PCF’s innovations in donor services were profiled in a Harvard Business School Case Study.

At WKKF he helped launch America Healing in 2009, a five-year, $75 million initiative to support programs that promote racial equity and address structural racism. He also championed the creation of a $100 million Mission Driven Investment Fund that built a remarkable portfolio of private double bottom line investments in alignment with the foundations programmatic and place-based focus areas.

For several years he served as co-chairman of the national D5 coalition on Diversity in Philanthropy. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Greater Washington Community Foundation and is a member of the Racial Equity Working Group of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Kindred, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that works in local public schools to build trusting relationships between parents of diverse backgrounds and supports them to work with school leadership to drive equity and diversity in their schools and communities.

Speirn began his career as a 7th and 8th grade English Teacher in Cleveland, Ohio. Later he was a law clerk at the U.S. Department of the Interior, worked as a poverty lawyer in North Carolina; and managed a large community health center in Arcata, California.

Sterling earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Stanford University and holds a law degree from the University of Michigan.
He is married with two sons and is an avid hiker and community gardener.

Former Executive Vice President, Silicon Valley Community Foundation

As the former executive vice president, Erica lead SVCF’s efforts to identify and respond to the most challenging issues facing the San Francisco Bay Area region. In this role she would oversee the institution’s discretionary grantmaking programs, strategic initiatives, research and convening activities. She also supported the institution’s public policy and advocacy work on board-prioritized issues.

Erica joined the community foundation in 2003 and has held several senior leadership positions including vice president and senior vice president of community leadership and grantmaking. Under her leadership the organization has received numerous awards for its work in economic security, early learning and education, immigration and land use planning.

Prior to joining the foundation, Erica was the director of research and evaluation at Applied Survey Research in Santa Cruz, California. While there she led the firm’s community assessment and major evaluation projects throughout the State.

Erica graduated with honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz and studied in Spain and Mexico. She serves on the board of the Community Action Agency in San Mateo County and is a current fellow of the American Leadership Forum – Silicon Valley Chapter.

Erica lives in Half Moon Bay with her husband, Jesse and daughter, Paloma.

Michelle Torgerson is dedicated to ensuring education equity for children and families, so that all children have access to the high-quality resources critical to their lifelong success and wellbeing. She has spent 20+ years leading organizations across the country and working alongside communities.

Her approach is equal parts creative, visionary social entrepreneur, and technical turn around executive. Michelle’s career has been focused on creating, growing, and sustaining award winning nonprofit organizations, ensuring measurable impact and long-term viability. She is seasoned in revenue generation including securing startup funding, building boards, creating long range philanthropy and sales engines.

Throughout her career, her focus on radical collaboration through conversations and movements that cross issue areas and sectors has been integral to her success.

Michelle is known for building strong teams with an emphasis on managing for measurable results, fostering team relationships, and creating a culture that develops hard skills and knowledge sharing.

Michelle joined Raising a Reader in June of 2018 as President and CEO and led the organization through one its largest shifts forward in the organization to date. Significantly, this included pivoting the organization’s approach to serving community amid the Covid-19 pandemic by launching two new program offerings which led to increasing the organization’s annual impact reach by nearly 50%. Michelle is proud to be a returning member to Raising a Reader, she previously served the organization, earlier in her career, as an outreach and development manager and was thrilled to come back to a mission that she loves.

Previously, Michelle was senior executive director of Reading Partners, a San Francisco-based literacy intervention organization. There she led the strategic regional growth in the Bay Area, St. Paul, MN and Tulsa, OK.

She also held executive positions at College Possible, a St. Paul based, national nonprofit that makes college admission and success possible for low-income students. She led the organization’s strategic replication, fundraising, and growth into new sites including Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Omaha.

As a management consultant to nonprofits and foundations in Los Angeles, Michelle served as the Vice President at Draper Consulting Group. She worked with over 40 clients in her five-year tenure during the 2008 recession covering a broad range of important issues areas including education, the arts, social services, and health care.

Michelle’s dedication to equity is in part informed by her experience as a National Urban Fellow where she currently serves as founding co-chair of the Alumni Advisory Board. She also serves on the San Francisco Bay Area Advisory Boards of Reach Out and Read, and Parent Child +.

Michelle graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science and received her Master of Public Administration from Bernard M. Baruch College as a National Urban Fellow.

Michelle is honored to have been recognized for her contributions, as the recipient of the State Farm and Golden State Warriors 2017 Community Achievement Award for her service in the San Francisco Bay Area and Emerging Philanthropy Leader of the Year awarded by EPIP for her service in Los Angeles in 2012.

A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Michelle now lives in Marin County, just beyond the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, with her partner, Kabra and incredible stepdaughter, Lily. Together, they love to travel the world with friends and family, devour books and delicious food, and sing every lyric of Lin-Manuel Miranda musicals.

Favorite Book from the RAR Collection:
My Friends by Taro Gomi

President and CEO, StriveTogether

Jennifer Blatz is the president and CEO of StriveTogether, a national nonprofit working in 70 communities across the United States to enable nearly 13 million young people to succeed in school and life.

Jennifer is a nationally recognized leader and expert in building place-based partnerships. For two decades, she has designed, developed and implemented strategies that drive large-scale community improvement through partnership with local leaders and organizations.

Prior to taking the helm of StriveTogether, Jennifer served in leadership roles, including Deputy Director and the Senior Director of Operations. She was instrumental in launching the national Cradle to Career Network and creating the StriveTogether Theory of Action™. She also developed a bold plan for 24 communities across the country to reach systems-level transformation by 2023.

Before leading StriveTogether, Jennifer was a founding member of StrivePartnership, serving Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Through her contributions, StrivePartnership became one of the most notable collective impact initiatives in the country.

Jennifer began her career in the education sector. As executive director of Ohio College Access Network, she led a network of community-based programs focused on improving access to and attainment of postsecondary education.

Jennifer serves as a PolicyLink Ambassador for Health Equity and as a LEAP Ambassador. She was also invited to help launch the Weave Movement at the Aspen Institute.

Jennifer has been named a YWCA of Greater Cincinnati Rising Star and a Cincinnati Business Courier Forty Under 40. She is a graduate of United Way of Greater Cincinnati’s Volunteer Leadership Development Program, the Billions Institute Skid Row School for Large-Scale Change and the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Women Excel Leadership Program.

Senior Vice President, Research & Development, Cohesity, Inc.

Kirk is Senior Vice President of Research and Development. In his 30+ years of experience, Kirk has led development teams in both startups and larger corporations. Prior to Cohesity, Kirk was Senior Vice President of Development at Tableau Software, helping people see and understand their data. Before joining Tableau, he was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Primary Data, developing intelligent automation software for enterprise data management. Previously, he was Vice President of Engineering at SanDisk. He also spent over 12 years at NetApp in several engineering leadership roles, and more than 14 years at Silicon Graphics.

Kirk is on the Board of Directors for the national non-profit organization Raising A Reader, and holds memberships with the following organizations: the Executive Leadership Council, Sigma Pi Phi fraternity, the National Society of Black Engineers, and Eta Kappa Nu, the Purdue EE Honor Society.

Kirk holds both a BSEE and MSEE degree from Purdue University.

Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens, most recently served as Senior Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Deputy Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency where she led the development of the California Master Plan for Early Learning and Care and the expansion of access to high-quality early childhood programs. She led systems change efforts at the local, state, and national levels in her role as executive director of First 5 San Mateo, First 5 California, and of the First Five Years Fund. Through it all, Perry has fought to protect children, improve and expand early learning programs, and increase investments in low-income children. Perry was instrumental in returning marriage equality to California after the landmark 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Hollingsworth v. Perry, which she wrote about in her book Love on Trial (Roaring Forties Press, 2017).

Meredith Crooks, Director of Sales Training

Meredith joined Yelp 12 years ago and has grown her career in sales from entry-level to AE to front-line Manager to Director leading sales orgs in New York, Phoenix, and Chicago. She currently leads the Learning and Development team who is responsible for all L&D programming across Yelp’s 2,000 strong local revenue engine including Sales, Customer Success, and Cross-sell/Upsell teams. Meredith has experience and specialty in scaling organizations, accelerating revenue performance, working cross-functionally, coaching, and leadership development. Meredith graduated as a Senior Fellow in the College of Communication from The University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Chicago with husband Liam and two daughters, Poppy (4) and Phoebe (2).

Karen Calloo is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Calloo Consulting Services LLC. Her career spans more than 20 years of solid experience and expertise in building and managing successful accounting and finance functions, including internal controls, accounting processes and policies, financial projections, budgeting, and reporting. She has a track record of leading teams to consistently execute strategies.

Karen was the Chief Financial Officer of Child Trends Incorporated, the nation’s largest research center focused exclusively on improving the lives and prospects of children and youth. In that leadership role, she managed the strategic growth, financial stability of the organization, and served as a key thought partner on its expansion of fund raising.

She built and maintained the organization’s financial function, and trained and mentored an exceptional team of accounting professionals, to deliver clean external financial audits throughout her tenure. She created and managed the organization’s financial budgets that grew from $10 million in revenue and 80 employees, to $30 million in revenue and over 200 employees. She was a strategic partner with the President, Chief Operations Officer, and the Board of Directors, as the team worked to manage growth, and sustain a motivated workforce.

Karen also led the management of the Information Technology function of Child Trends, where she provided leadership and oversight of a team of Technology experts, ensuring that data was rapidly accessible and secure. Through her leadership and vision, the IT infrastructure of the organization had the capability to pivot to remote work, which proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to joining Child Trends, Karen successfully led various accounting departments in multi-million-dollar for-profit companies for 10 years. She directly managed budgets of up to $650 million in revenue, including consolidations of financial statements of up to 45 worldwide subsidiaries. Early in her career, she worked for three years in direct auditing with Arthur Andersen, one of the top six audit firms at that time.

She holds a Master of Business Administration from Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Howard University.

Director/Consultant, Thriving Families Thriving Children

Portia Kennel is a veteran leader in the early childhood field Portia has been a champion for quality early learning focused on closing the opportunity gap for our youngest children. After years of partnering with philanthropic organizations to build and launch innovative early childhood programs, Portia Kennel joined the Buffett Early Childhood Fund in 2015 to serve as a senior advisor to the foundation. During her tenure at the foundation Portia led efforts to develop family engagement program models that empower parents as a force for change in their families, schools, and communities. Before joining the foundation in 2015, she worked as the Senior Vice President for Program Innovation at Start Early (formerly, Ounce of Prevention Fund) in Chicago. Portia has more than 30 years of experience designing, implementing, and scaling effective, evidence-based early childhood education and family support program models for children and their families In 2000, she developed and led the implementation of the first Educare School, (early learning and care program) serving Chicago’s south side. As the founding Executive Director of the Educare Learning Network, Portia led the national expansion of Educare to a diverse range of communities across America. Portia also directed the team that created the program framework and components of the Educare model of intensive family engagement (IFE). The IFE training and professional development builds professionals’ capacity to employ intentional practices that support building strong relationships with families. Her work is grounded in an understanding of early childhood development, teaching practices, family systems and clinical issues related to working with families in under resourced communities. Portia holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Illinois and is a Zero to Three Fellow. In addition, Portia is the 2020 recipient of the Global MindED Inclusive Leader Award in Early Childhood. She serves on a variety of boards and task forces. Portia lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Gihani is a Partner based in Bridgespan’s San Francisco office and serves as Bridgespan’s Head of Strategic Planning and Operations. She returned to Bridgespan in October 2023 having previously spent almost a decade in Bridgespan’s Advisory practice (2006-2014) leading strategic planning engagements for several mission-driven organizations and foundations with a focus on education and youth development. During this time, she also co-led the firm’s 2014 knowledge campaign around social and emotional learning and served as Bridgespan’s first Talent Manager in 2013.

Prior to rejoining Bridgespan, Gihani was the Vice President of Strategy and Board Affairs at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF). In this capacity, she supported strategy development and implementation across the organization in addition to managing board engagement efforts. Before that, Gihani was part of the executive team at Playworks where she focused on developing and executing a partnerships strategy to help a range of organizations integrate practices and mindsets to support safe and healthy play for all children.

Gihani started her full-time career in public finance investment banking and has also worked as a consultant to the World Bank. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University with a major in Economics and a minor in Management Science and Engineering as well as an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California in Berkeley.

Gihani is a co-author of two publications which were featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review titled “Rethinking How Students Succeed” (February 2015) and “High Stakes Donor Collaborations” (Spring 2013). She also co-authored a piece on offshoring of professional services to Sri Lanka as a development opportunity during her consultancy at the World Bank.

She lives in Oakland with her husband and son and was a founding member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee at her son’s school in Oakland Unified School District. She has served on the board of ARISE High School in Oakland and is currently on the national board of Raising A Reader in addition to being a program advisor to Reading Partners and Niroga Institute.