CAROL EMIG
Board Chair

President, Child Trends

Carol Emig has spent her career at the intersection of public policy, programs, and research related to children and youth.   Since 2006, she has been President of Child Trends, the nation’s largest research center focused exclusively on improving the lives and prospects of 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 impact on child poverty, early childhood, child welfare, and racial equity.

Under Carol’s leadership, Child Trends has 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; expanded its capacity to support policymakers with data and research; grew its communications function; and redoubled the organization’s commitment to promoting equity.

Carol’s previous professional experiences include Executive Director of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, Deputy Director of the National Commission on Children, 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 Board of Directors of Raising a Reader and serves on the Board of the Children’s Chorus of Washington. She is also an advisor to the Board of Directors of Venture Philanthropy Partners. In the past, Carol has served on the Boards of the Stoneleigh Foundation and Reach Out and Read.

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.

STERLING SPEIRN
Board Secretary

Senior Fellow, National Conference on Citizenship

Sterling Speirn is the former Chief Executive Officer and now a Senior Fellow at the National Conference on Citizenship. He previously served as President & CEO of the Peninsula Community Foundation, now the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (PCF: 1992-2005), and as President & CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF: 2006-2013).

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.

JENNIFER BLATZ
Member

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.