DR. NEAL HALFON | Director, Centre for Healthier Children, Familiies and Communities
Neal Halfon also directs the Child and Family Health Program in the UCLA School of Public Health, and the National Centre for Infant and Early Childhood Health Policy. Dr. Halfon is professor of paediatrics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; community health sciences in the UCLA School of Public Health; and public policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs. He is also a consultant in the Health Program at RAND. Dr. Halfon’s primary research interests include the provision of developmental services to young children, access to care for low-income children, and delivery of health services to children with special health care needs — with a particular interest in abused and neglected children in the foster care system.

THE HONOURABLE JOHN HAMM | Former Premier, Province of Nova Scotia 
John Hamm worked as a family physician for 30 years before entering provincial politics to become the Member of the House of Assembly for Pictou Centre riding and Premier of Nova Scotia from 1999 to 2006. He is a strong advocate for improved health care in Nova Scotia and across Canada. John now acts as Chairperson of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Council for Early Child Development.

DR. CLYDE HERTZMAN | Director, Human Early Learning Partnership, University of British Columbia
Clyde Hertzman is a professor in the Department of Health Care & Epidemiology and a Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) Successful Societies and Experience-based Brain & Biological Development Programs. Through his work with CIAR, Clyde was instrumental in creating a new synthesis which links population health to human development.  He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Harvard Center for Society and Health; the Steering Committee of the Canadian Population Health Initiative; the Presidential Search Committee of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research; and is a member of the European Science Foundation's Program on Social Variation in Health Expectancy. He is president of the Council for Early Child Development.

DR. MAGDALENA JANUS | Chair in Early Child Development at McMaster University
Working with the late Dr. Dan Offord, Magdalena Janus developed the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a measure of children's readiness to learn at school entry. Magdalena and her team at the Offord Centre have supported the implementation of the EDI for over 500,000 children in Canada, and its adaptation in a number of international sites, including Moldova, Jamaica, Kosovo, and Mexico. She regularly serves as a consultant with various national and international organizations, including the World Bank and UNICEF, on the measurement and indicators of early child development.

DR. CHRISTA JAPEL | Professor, Faculty of Education, Department of Special Education and Training, Université du Québec à Montréal
Christa Japel is a member of the team leading the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. Her research interests include the impact of family and child care environments on child development. She has headed a number of studies on child care quality and validated interventions to improve child care quality through in-service, standard-based training of educators. She is the author of two recent reports published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy: Quality Counts! and Factors of Risk, Vulnerability and School Readiness Among Preschoolers : Evidence from Québec.