Board Celebrates More Than a Decade of Progress Under Executive Director Lisa Klein; Promotes Helene Stebbins as Successor
After leading the Alliance for Early Success through more than a decade of strategic growth, Executive Director Lisa Klein is stepping down. Deputy Director Helene Stebbins will step into the role on September 1, 2020, the organization’s Board of Directors announced today. The Alliance for Early Success is a national nonprofit focused on early childhood policy and advocacy at the state level.
“In her eleven years at the helm of the Alliance for Early Success, Lisa has helped put the organization center stage in state early childhood policy advocacy,” said Alliance Board Chair Jessie Rasmussen, President of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund. “Lisa had a vision for an organization with the reach, strength, and expertise to impact outcomes for kids in all 50 states, and she has sure delivered.” Under Klein’s leadership, the organization grew to support early childhood advocates in all 50 states, and established a comprehensive policy framework that addresses the health, education, and family support issues facing children birth through eight.
Klein will depart the Alliance to lead Impact Fellows Action Fund, which she founded to provide early-childhood advocates with political action funding — the missing piece in the advocacy toolbox — to transform futures. “She may be leaving the Alliance, but she’s not leaving the cause, and we expect her to continue to fight for better policies and funding for young children,” Rasmussen said.
Stebbins has been integral to the Alliance since its inception in 2005 — as a grantee, a consultant, and for the past three years as deputy director — and brings more than two decades of experience working on early childhood policy at the state level to the Executive Director role. “Helene has deep roots in the early childhood policy and advocacy community, a belief in the power of investing early, and knowledge about the central role of states,” Rasmussen said. “She brings experience, continuity, and a highly strategic approach that will take the Alliance to a new level of effectiveness.”
