Kim Davenport is Senior Vice President of Education and Program at Jumpstart - a leading national early education non-profit organization. Davenport joined Jumpstart in 2001 and oversees the development of Jumpstart programming including research, curriculum, training, monitoring, and assessment, as well as program model and pilot development. Most recently, Davenport led a team to research, create, test and roll out a new curriculum that has been proven to increase preschool children's school readiness.
Jumpstart pairs college students and community volunteers with preschool children in low-income communities during the school year to help them gain crucial language and literacy skills to prepare them for success in kindergarten and beyond. Each year, Jumpstart's Read for the Record engages millions of children and adults to read the same book on the same day to combat the crisis in early literacy that adversely affects children in low-income communities. Jumpstart has received a four-star rating from Charity Navigator and has received awards from FastCompany (Social Capitalist Award 2004 - 2008), Worth Magazine (Top 100 Charities) and The Cause Marketing Forum (Best Cause Marketing Event 2008). Jumpstart has been featured in Parenting Magazine, New York Times and on TODAY, CBS Radio among others with Davenport serving as a key expert on early education issues.
Kim joined Jumpstart as the Director of the Pearson Teacher Fellowship, a national program that recruited select Jumpstart college student alumni to become preschool teachers in Head Start and other early learning centers. Prior to joining Jumpstart's staff, Davenport served as Director of the Child Care Network at Beansprout Networks, a venture company connecting parents, pediatricians, and child care providers, where she built the first generation of Web-based tools for centers to construct Web sites. Davenport has been a teacher, director, and adjunct faculty in child study. Davenport holds an M.A. in Child Development from Tufts University and is a graduate of Villanova University.
As an early education expert and mother of a preschool age daughter, Zoe, Davenport is both professionally and personally committed to improving education for all children. Davenport lives in Worcester, MA with her husband and daughter.
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