Diane Trister Dodge

Diane Trister Dodge is an early childhood educator, author, and entrepreneur who founded Teaching Strategies and created The Creative Curriculum. What began as a homemade filmstrip and a self-published guide run out of her basement in 1978 grew, over 24 years, into the largest early childhood education publisher in the United States, with materials now reaching more than 15 million children, including roughly 90 percent of Head Start programs. She built her work around a single conviction - that children learn in the context of relationships - and after retiring in 2012 she and her husband Lowell channeled the proceeds into scholarships and programs for children in poverty.