HeadStarter Network’s Early Childhood Innovation Summit brought together practitioners and entrepreneurs to accelerate impact
As Promise’s Entrepreneur in Residence, I was thrilled to represent our team at the HeadStarter Network’s Early Childhood Innovation Summit in July. Lisa Stewart, Chief Strategy Officer at the National Head Start Association, invited Promise to partner on Market or Park It, a session that featured five entrepreneurs from Promise’s Venture Network of innovative organization in early childhood development.
The Early Childhood Innovation Summit brought together early childhood practitioners and collaborators from across a range of fields, with the goal of sparking cross-disciplinary collaboration and innovation. The audience of technologists, educators, philanthropists, researchers and others saw demos from five ventures, and then participated in focus groups to give these ventures feedback on their pressing business challenges.
I had the opportunity to kick off the session with Promise’s field-wide perspective on the state of innovation in early childhood. I made the case that we are in a time of unique opportunity for our field. For the first time in a long time, we are experiencing tailwinds rather than headwinds, thanks to simultaneous advances in science, technology, policy and social entrepreneurship. I was especially excited to share why I believe innovation is necessary to overcome achievement and opportunity gaps for the children and families who face the greatest adversities.
The five featured ventures were selected based on the strength of their ideas and leadership, as well as their relevance to the HeadStarter network community. The entrepreneurs bring experience as early childhood educators, and in adjacent fields like health care, K-12 education, and workforce development.
The featured ventures are tackling challenges in multiple areas of early childhood, from health, to language and literacy, to screening and assessment. For example, Cell-Ed provides mobile-first professional development for front line early childhood staff. Another venture, Brainchild Technologies, uses a smart pacifier to screen infants for hearing loss. Scroll through the Airtable below to learn about all five featured ventures.
The Summit was a fantastic opportunity to bring entrepreneurs from Promise’s Venture Network into direct contact with some of the most forward-thinking practitioners from the field. Promise is thrilled to continue its partnership with the HeadStarter Network and eagerly looks forward to future collaborations that spur greater innovation and impact in the field.
To learn about future opportunities like this for Promise Venture Network members, as well as our public programs, make sure to sign up for our mailing list here.
The author, Chelsea Sprayregen, is the Entrepreneur in Residence at Promise Venture Studio, and is also the CEO and Co-founder of Pie for Providers.
