Pepper, Alison

Biography

Alison Pepper is a national early childhood consultant and quality improvement specialist working in the early education field for decades. With a Master’s in ECE Supervision and Administration, Early Childhood from Bank Street College of Education, she has supported hundreds of directors and teachers in their practice with a focus on quality improvement in a myriad of educational settings. She also studied in Jerusalem, Israel and taught kindergarten there.

Leadership development for early childhood program directors and running a high quality preschool as well as facilitating NAEYC Accreditation are her areas of expertise. She is the author of “Kickstart Kindergarten Readiness”, published by Gryphon House in 2017. Currently she is adjunct faculty at Bank Street College of Education, teaching and an advisor for supervised fieldwork in their Early Childhood Advanced Leadership Certificate Program. She also is an early childhood program evaluator consulting with the NYCDOE.

Inspired by Reggio Emilia practice, she advocates creating environments for children designed for playful, inquisitive exploration and wonder with stimulating responsive educators engaged with young children. She has advised architects and institutions on the design of their facilities for young children.

As Assistant Vice President, Early Childhood Education and Family Engagement Education at the Jewish Community Center Association of North America from 2012-2015, she advised JCC ECE directors and programs around the continent on high quality practice and delivered substantive professional development as well as planned and administered a continental framework for ECE excellence in these programs.

From 2008-12, Alison worked at NAEYC in Washington DC as the Senior Director of Accreditation Program Support. There she created support systems and training for programs throughout the nation working on NAEYC accreditation. During her tenure at NAEYC, she co-authored the book “Best Practices of Accreditation Facilitation Projects: A Framework for Program Quality Improvement Using NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria” that has been widely distributed around the country.

In the 2000’s, as Director of Quality New York, a large Accreditation Facilitation Project in NYC, she facilitated with the QNY team 160 programs to successful accreditation by NAEYC. Prior to that position, she was the director of several child care programs in NYC for many years.