child-development
(11)
The Brooklyn Nonprofit Building a One-Stop Village Around Every Child
Yeled V'Yalda began with 78 children. Four decades later, its answer to fragmented family services is a network where preschool, therapy, nutrition and parent support can meet under one institutional roof.
Foss Swim School
Foss turned swim lessons into a school system: fixed quarters, tiny peer groups, warm purpose-built pools and a curriculum designed backward from a confident stroke. Thirty-three years later, the model has reached 36 locations without becoming a franchise.
Diane Trister Dodge
In this Early Learning Nation Studio conversation, Chris Riback interviews Diane Trister Dodge, the founder of Teaching Strategies and one of the most influential figures in American early childhood education. Dodge traces her path from wanting simply 'to become the best teacher possible' to accidentally becoming a publisher: she trained Head Start teachers in 1966 Mississippi, made her own materials on a mimeograph machine, and self-published a filmstrip about classroom arrangement when no publisher would take it. That first effort grew into The Creative Curriculum and the Teaching Strategies GOLD assessment system, tools that shaped early learning nationwide. She reflects on what high-quality classrooms look like, the persistent inequities facing at-risk children and early childhood teachers, and her current work giving back through the Dodge Family Fund.
The Assessment That Never Asks a Child to Sit Still
GOLD is an online, research-based observational assessment system from Teaching Strategies that lets teachers document authentic observations of children from birth through third grade during everyday classroom activities. Built around 38 color-coded, research-based objectives, it turns notes, photos, videos, and work samples into whole-child data that connects directly to instruction, families, and program-level reporting.
Maka Kids
Maka Kids is a Detroit-based children's media company building an ad-free, algorithm-free streaming app for kids ages 0 to 6. Founded in 2023 by Isabel Sheinman and Tanyella Leta, the company designs screen time around child well-being rather than engagement. Every piece of content is scored against Maka Imprint, a patent-pending developmental framework built over two years of research with the Yale Child Study Center that maps seven domains of early childhood development across more than 650 indicators. Maka raised $3 million in seed funding led by Michigan Rise in May 2026.
Isabel Sheinman
Isabel Sheinman is the co-founder and CEO of Maka Kids, a Detroit-based children's media company building an ad-free, algorithm-free streaming app for kids ages zero to six that is optimized for child well-being rather than watch-time. Before Maka, she co-founded NABU, a global literacy nonprofit that has put early-grade reading materials in front of more than 15 million children across 26 countries. With a decade spent at the intersection of education, technology, and social impact - and a resume that runs through Georgetown, NYU Stern, and Mastercard - Sheinman is wagering that the most valuable thing a screen can offer a small child is restraint.
Coral Care
Coral Care is a Cambridge, Massachusetts based pediatric therapy company that brings licensed speech, occupational and physical therapists into children's homes, with services covered by insurance. Founded in 2023 by Jen Wirt after she ran into the system's long waitlists trying to get help for her own daughter, the company now operates a network of more than 600 clinicians across nine states.
Huckleberry Labs
Huckleberry Labs is an Irvine, California parenting-technology company that pairs pediatric expertise, data science, and AI to help families improve children's sleep and daily routines. Its Huckleberry app tracks sleep, feeding, and development, and uses the SweetSpot predictive engine to recommend optimal nap and bedtime windows. Founded in 2017 by Jessica Toh and Seng Oon Toh after their own sleepless nights as new parents, Huckleberry is used by more than 5 million families worldwide and has expanded into context-aware AI guidance with the 2026 launch of Berry.
Jen Wirt
Jen Wirt is the founder and CEO of Coral Care, a venture-backed digital health company that sends licensed pediatric speech, occupational, and physical therapists into families' homes and bills their insurance directly. She started the company in 2023 after her own daughter's developmental delays sent her through six months of waitlists and thousands of dollars in out-of-network bills. A former product manager in consumer electronics and digital health, Wirt built Coral Care as a three-sided platform that pairs families needing care with clinicians who want to build sustainable private practices. By early 2026 the company had raised $19.5M, operated across five states, and grown a network of 400+ providers.
brightwheel
Brightwheel is the all-in-one operating platform for early education centers, combining billing, attendance, family communication, enrollment, lesson planning, and compliance reporting into a single product. Founded in 2014 by Dave Vasen and backed by $88.8M in funding, it serves 150,000+ childcare programs and 2.2 million monthly active users across 50+ countries, holding over 53% market share in childcare management software.
Teaching Strategies, LLC
Teaching Strategies is a Bethesda, Maryland based early childhood education company best known for The Creative Curriculum and GOLD, a formative assessment system used by hundreds of thousands of teachers serving children from birth through third grade. The company provides integrated curriculum, observation-based assessment, family engagement tools, and professional development across Head Start, public Pre-K, private child care, and elementary programs in the United States and abroad.