The HealthySteps National Advisory Committee (NAC) provides recommendations and guidance for effective sustainability, replication, and scaling of HealthySteps. We asked NAC member Matt Glickman about the “why” behind his work with the Committee.
Matt Glickman is a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the co-founder and former CEO/President of Promise Venture Studio and BabyCenter. He has spent his career founding, building and leading entrepreneurial organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, including BabyCenter, the leading online resource for expectant and new parents. Matt works to support social entrepreneurs and other leaders who are looking to scale and grow the impact of their solutions in early childhood, whether education-, health-, or social-service-related.
How did you find out about HealthySteps and what drew you to the program?
I have worked in K12 education and saw firsthand the importance and value of reaching children as early as possible. And through my work with BabyCenter, I was struck by the emerging brain research at the time that underscored that importance.
I learned about HealthySteps through my work at Promise Venture Studio, which offers support and connections to innovative, ambitious, high-impact organizations in the early childhood field. We support over 400 organizations, but I was, of course, drawn to its effective model and the ambition and quality of the organization’s staff. And, like the vast majority of people I know in the field of early childhood, there is some personal connection (of the heart) that drew us to this work.
I love that HealthySteps appeals to my heart, but also to my analytical side.
ZERO TO THREE knows that one needs to be passionate about the importance of the work, but also analytical about devising the best way to reach and impact the lives of children and families across the country.
What do you see as HealthySteps’ unique contribution to child and family health?
HealthySteps embeds itself in the closest thing we have to a universal, trusted system in early childhood—pediatric primary care. ZERO TO THREE has developed a program that works effectively for children and families with the greatest needs, and they are equally focused on the hard work of figuring out how to bring it to scale across a large, diverse, and hard-to-access set of providers. The team is realistic about the challenges of working in a fragmented, complex, overworked and under-resourced field, humble about their role in working with partners on the frontlines in many diverse settings, yet passionate about working to reach as many communities and families as possible in as high-quality and sustainable a manner as possible.
What motivates you personally to support HealthySteps’ mission?
There are, unfortunately, too few examples of organizations doing quality work at scale in early childhood. I hope that HealthySteps can expand even further AND serve as an inspiration and model for others to do great work.
What do you see as the role of the National Advisory Committee?
The NAC is not a governing body. What we do is bring ideas and connections, and serve as a sounding board for the leaders of HealthySteps. I appreciate that the committee members bring diverse experiences and that the committee is balanced across these differences, so we can all bring our strengths and learn from each other without one function or viewpoint dominating.
HealthySteps matters because…
All children, no matter their background, deserve to fulfill their innate promise.