Baby Talk: Closing the Achievement Gap, Word by Word

Speakers

Moderator

Michael H. Levine, PhD

Executive Director, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
website

Michael H. Levine is the founding executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. The Center conducts research, develops prototypes, scalable models and design challenges, and convenes leaders to promote investments in high quality media experiences for children. Levine also serves in a senior executive position on Sesame Workshop’s leadership team, concentrating on public engagement and educational impact for the global non-profit.

Dr. Levine serves on New York City’s Universal Pre-Kindergarten Scientific Advisory Council, and is a Pahara-Aspen Education Reform Fellow. He has been a frequent adviser to the White House and the U.S. Department of Education and writes for public affairs journals, including a regular column for Huffington Post. He was named by Working Mother magazine as one of America’s most influential leaders in family and children’s policy and serves on several nonprofit boards, including Classroom, Inc., Forum for Youth Investment, We Are Family Foundation, DigiLearn, the Leman School, and Journeys in Film. Michael received his Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University’s Florence Heller School and his B.S. from Cornell University.

Panelists

Patricia K. Kuhl, PhD

Co-Director, Institute for Learning and Behavioral Sciences (ILABS), University of Washington
website

Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl holds the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and is Co-Director of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, Director of the University of Washington’s NSF Science of Learning Center, and Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is internationally recognized for her research on early language and bilingual brain development, for pioneering brain measures on young children, and studies that show how young children learn. She presented her work at two White House conferences (Clinton White House in 1997 and Bush White House in 2001). Dr. Kuhl is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Rodin Academy, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Psychological Society, and the Cognitive Science Society. Dr. Kuhl was awarded the Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America in 1997. She received the University of Washington’s Faculty Lectureship Award in 1998. In 2005, she was awarded the Kenneth Craik Research Award from Cambridge University. In 2007, Dr. Kuhl was awarded the University of Minnesota’s Outstanding Achievement Award. In Paris in 2008, Dr. Kuhl was awarded the Gold Medal of the Acoustical Society of America for her work on early learning and brain development. In November 2011 in Paris, Dr. Kuhl was awarded the IPSEN Foundation’s Jean-Louis Signoret Neuropsychology Prize. Dr. Kuhl is co-author of “The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn” (Harper Collins).

Patti Miller, MA

Director, Too Small to Fail Initiative for the Clinton Foundation
website

Patti Miller is the director of Too Small to Fail for the Clinton Foundation. Too Small to Fail is a joint initiative of the Clinton Foundation and Next Generation to help parents and caregivers take meaningful actions to improve the health and well-being of America’s youngest children, ages zero to five, and prepare them to succeed in the 21st century.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Patti was the Vice President of Public Policy for Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of Sesame Street. Patti previously served as Vice President of the Children & the Media Program at Children Now. In that role, she led a broad coalition in advocacy and policy efforts to improve the media environment for children.

Patti holds an M.A. in Social Sciences in Education from Stanford University and a B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dana Suskind, MD

Director, Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program at the University of Chicago
Founder and Director, Thirty Million Words Initiative
website

Dana Suskind is Professor of Surgery at the University of Chicago, Director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program and Founder and Director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative.  Based on scientific research that shows the critical importance of early language exposure on the developing child, Thirty Million Words helps parents enhance their home language environment in order to optimize their child's brain development and, therefore, his or her ability to learn.  An evidence-based intervention, Thirty Million Words is supported by a broad coalition of public and private partnerships and is an extension of Dr. Suskind's Project ASPIRE, which she created to assure that her patients from disadvantaged backgrounds reached their full listening and spoken language potentials.  Dr. Suskind's ultimate goal, and that of her dedicated team, is to help all children reach their full potentials and to close the ever-widening achievement gap.