Keynote Speakers

 

Joan Lombardi, Ph.D

Joan Lombardi currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Inter-Departmental Liaison for Early Childhood Development in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is a Research Professor at the Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University. As the director of The Children’s Project, she served as an advisor to a number of foundations and policy initiatives and helped create innovative projects with a wide variety of national and international organizations. She brings a wealth of experience from her earlier government service, as well as insights gained through her leadership as founding chair of the Birth to Five Policy Alliance and other initiatives. Dr. Lombardi served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as the first director of the Child Care Bureau. In 2004, Dr. Lombardi launched the Global Leaders for Young Children program in partnership with The World Forum Foundation, which is currently providing leadership support to 19 early education leaders from eight countries. In addition, she has served as a senior fellow with The Global Fund for Children in Washington, D.C. Dr. Lombardi is the author of Time to Care: Redesigning Child Care to Promote Education, Support and Build Communities, and co-editor of A Beacon of Hope: The Promise of Early Head Start for America’s Youngest Children. She received her Ph.D. in human development education from the University of Maryland, College Park. She lives in Washington D.C. and is the proud mother of two.

 

Alison Gopnik, Ph.D

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University and her Ph.D from Oxford University. Her honors include a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada University Research Fellowship, an Osher Visiting Scientist Fellowship at the Exploratorium, a Center for the Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship, and a Moore Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was the first to argue that children’s minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. She was one of the founders of the study of “theory of mind,” illuminating how children come to understand the minds of others. She also formulated the “theory theory,” the idea that children learn in the same way scientists do. She is the author of more than 100 articles and several books including Words, Thoughts and Theories (coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff), MIT Press, 1997, The Scientist in the Crib (coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl) William Morrow, 1999, and the recently published The Philosophical Baby; What children’s minds tell us about love, truth and the meaning of life Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009. She has also written for Science, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist, and Slate. She has three sons and lives in Berkeley, California.