Fraser Mustard MD PhD (Canada)

Fraser has a MD from the University of Toronto and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 1966 Fraser helped establish the new school of Medicine and Health Sciences at McMaster University and in 1982 he created and established The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIfAR). Fraser is involved with the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, UNICEF and the Aga Khan University in Pakistan constantly emphasizing the enormous importance to society of early child development for competent quality populations. Fraser has received the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario and honorary degrees from a number of Canadian and international institutions. Fraser has been a leader in the socioeconomic determinants of human development and health with a particular emphasis the role of communities.

Clyde Hertzman MD MSc (Canada)

Clyde has obtained his M.Sc and MD from Mc Master University. Clyde is the president of the Council for Early Child Development (CECD); Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) of College for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC); Canada Research Chair in Population Health and Human Development; and Professor in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. He serves as Principal Investigator of the Provincial Early Child Development Mapping Unit; the Child & Youth Developmental Trajectories Research Unit; and the Population Health and Learning Observatory. Clyde has played a central role in creating a framework that links population health to human development, emphasizing the special role of early childhood development as a determinant of health.

Magdalena Janus PhD (Canada)

Magdalena holds an MSc in biology from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and a PhD in behavioural sciences from Cambridge University. She is currently an Associate Professor at McMaster University where she holds the Ontario Chair in Early Child Development. Since joining the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University in 1997, Magdalena, together with the late Dr. Dan Offord, developed the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a measure of children's readiness to learn at school entry. This initiative has generated interest at national and international levels, from academic and social policy perspectives. Magdalena and her team have now supported the implementation of the EDI for over 500,000 children in Canada, and its adaptation in a number of international sites, for example Moldova, Jamaica, Kosovo, and Mexico. She regularly serves as a consultant with various national and international organisations, including the World Bank and UNICEF, on the measurement and indicators of early child development. Magdalena's research interests also include the transition to school, with a particular emphasis on children with special needs, and communities' engagement in children's early development and health.

Lori G. Irwin, PhD RN (Canada)

Lori is the Deputy Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership. She completed a PhD in Nursing and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Early Child Development and Population Health at the University of British Columbia. Lori directs the work of the Early Development Instrument Project in BC. Her research interests include investigating the various child, family and community factors that influence children's early development. Lori's interests also include initiatives related to creating a child rights monitoring framework for early child development for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, international initiatives related to population-based monitoring of ECD, and structural/contextual factors (e.g. policy) that shape parenting practices both domestically and internationally.

Ziba Vaghri, BN, PhD (Canada)

Ziba has completed a doctoral degree in Human Nutrition with a special focus on Pediatric Nutrition at the University of British Columbia. Ziba is the Research Associate leading the International Research and Initiatives Program of the Human Early learning Partnership. She began her career as a Registered Nurse. Her work as a health care professional in various countries has given her a rich experience in working in multi-ethnic settings, while her graduate school research at University of British Columbia has taught her the skills of conducting collaborative and multidisciplinary research. Ziba is also a member of a team working on the development of a framework for monitoring child rights in early childhood for UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Emily Hertzman, BA, MA (Canada)

Emily is a PhD student in the department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She holds a BA and an MA in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia. Over the past four years she has worked as a research assistant and a coordinator of international projects at the Human Early Learning Partnership, conducting research and producing communications that promote knowledge about Early Child Development (ECD) and ECD measurement and monitoring in an international context. Between 2005 and 2008, she was a member of the Organizational Hub of the Knowledge Network for ECD, which was part of the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health.

Eric K. Duku MSc. P. Stat (Canada)

Eric holds a Professional Statistician designation as well as a Master's degree in statistics and a graduate diploma in population studies. Eric has worked at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, at McMaster University since 1997. He has been the Senior Statistical Analyst since 2001 with the school readiness team. Eric has worked extensively with the data collection and analyses of readiness to learn at school entry, locally, nationally and internationally. Eric's current research interests include inequalities in children's health with particular interests in readiness to learn at school entry, autism, aggression and bullying, and cross-cultural and measurement invariance issues in data collection. He is a member of the Statistical Society of Canada.

Cindy Walsh (Canada)

Cindy is the Program Manager of the Early Development Program at the Offord Centre for Child Studies and is responsible for all administrative activities related to EDI implementation nationally and internationally. She is also manager of all related research projects in Early Child Development. Cindy has been a staff member of McMaster University for over 24 years, and prior to joining the School Readiness to Learn project was Dan Offord's administrative assistant for 10 years.  Cindy joined the SRL Project in its infancy, and was instrumental in developing its scope.

Sharon Goldfeld MD FRACP FAFPHM PhD (Australia)

Sharon is a community paediatrician and public health specialist. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children's Hospital and Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. She is also the Senior Medical Advisor (Child Health) in the Victorian Government Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and a member of several national and state committees that focus on children's issues. Sharon has a PhD in health service research and has subsequently focused her research on issues of policy interest such as the development of indicators and data, improving health care delivery and factors related to health service utilization. She currently directs the national Australian Early Development Index Program.

Sally Brinkman BA BSc GDOH MPH (Australia)  

Sally has a Masters degree in Public Health and is undertaking a PhD in developmental science research methods. Sally is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Child Health Research and Curtin University's Centre for Developmental Health. Sally is a Social Epidemiologist and Bio-statistician with 20 years experience working across the public, private and academic sectors. Sally spearheaded the use of the Early Development Index (EDI) in Australia starting with a small sample of 200 children in 2002 in Australia the EDI is now a national progress measure with a triennial census of all 5 year olds. Sally frequently consults to the World Bank and UNICEF as a specialist in early childhood measurement and research design, recently working in the Philippines, Jordan and Indonesia. Sally is particularly interested in the cultural adaptation of instrumentation, working towards global indicators that are locally relevant, valid and reliable while internationally comparable.  Sally is also the Consortium's Chief Scientific Officer.

Mary Young MD PhD (United States)

Mary is a Pediatrician and a Public Health Specialist. She is the Lead Child Development Specialist in the World Bank's Human Development Network and the World Bank's primary advocate for young children's wellbeing and development. Mary is Board Certified by the American Academy of Pediatrics and by the American Academy of Preventive Medicine. Her operational experience includes projects in China, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean (Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Jamaica, and Dominican Republic). She manages an award-winning website--Early Child Development Knowledge Base (http://www.worldbank.org/children) for the use of field practitioners and agencies interested in early child development. 

Joan Lombardi, PhD (United States)

Joan received a Ph.D. in human development education from the University of Maryland, College Park. Joan is the director of The Children's Project in Washington DC and a senior advisor to a number of national and international organizations. Joan has served as the deputy assistant secretary for External Affairs in the Administration for Children and Families, United States 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 provides leadership support to early education leaders from more than 25 countries.

Nurper Ulkuer, PhD (United States)

Nurper is Senior Advisor for Early Childhood Development (ECD) and the Head of the ECD Unit/Programmes at UNICEF New York Head Quarters. Nurper has worked as a UNICEF Area Advisor in the Central Asian Republics and Kazakhstan (CARK), providing technical and professional support to UNICEF Country Offices and their national counterparts in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Among her accomplished tasks were the establishment of CARK Education Forum, several national tasks forces for ECD, Child Rearing Studies, Parenting Programs, Communication Materials, and an ECD Training Programs for the front-line health workers.

Nurper started her career with UNICEF in 1989, as a National Education and Child Development Officer in Turkey, and gradually took additional program responsibilities in the areas of Communication for Women, Research and Monitoring, Policy Planning and Advocacy. Prior to UNICEF, she was as an Associate Professor and the Chair of Child Development at Gazi University, in Ankara, Turkey. Her professional interest is in policy planning and advocacy for quality child development programs for children and families, especially for families in need of immediate support. Nurper has B.Sc. in Child Development (Hacettepe University, Turkey), Dip. Ed. (Educational Psychology, and Comparative Education), MA and Ph.D. in Comparative Education (Institute of Education, University of London).