Katharine Mason is a management consultant and trainer who has dedicated her 30 year career to improving outcomes for vulnerable children and their families. With this passion as her foundation Katharine provides consultation and training services to Head Start administrators and Governing Bodies that support data-driven decision making, continuous improvement and compliance in a strategic, innovative and inclusive manner.

With a Master Degree in Public Administration focusing in Management and Organizational Change, Katharine brings over a decade of experience as a senior leader at a large and innovative Head Start program to support Early Care and Education and Family Support programs to develop Strategic Plans, redesign administrative and procedural systems, prepare proposals, conduct internal assessments, and become ready for compliance reviews. Katharine is experienced in project management and establishing community collaborations to meet and enhance program outcomes. She is knowledgeable of Head Start Performance Standards and California Title V and XXII regulations, and has supported grantees in creating systems and policies that are compliant across all regulations. Katharine’s areas of expertise include Leadership, Program Design and Management, Governance, Child Safety, and Staff Wellness and Professional Development.

Contact: kmason830@earthlink.net or (925) 852-4408

ChildrenFlow’s mission is to empower the harmonious development of young children by providing innovative and impactful professional development to early childhood initiatives.

• ChildrenFlow is a professional development organization that provides specialized services in areas of most need in early childhood programs. For example, Dual Language Learners, Challenging Behaviors, Trauma, Resilience, STEM, Instructional Support Strategies, and Effective Teacher-child interactions. We offer this content for Infant, Toddler, and Preschool programs to ensure support to programs from birth to age 5.
• At ChildrenFlow we listen to what Head Start and Early Head Start programs need in terms of professional expert support. Based on the needs, we develop a deep cutting-edge scientific literature review on research-based best practices to develop high-quality content for training and coaching. We also ensure to make sure we’re taking a culturally linguistically approach to the services that we offer in order to support increasing equity in the field of early childhood.
• Our services are highly interactive, practical, hands-on, with the goal of helping staff immediately implement what they have learned. These services are offered online, in-person, or blended approaches. Our aim is to help build capacity within our clients’ organizations so that with our support they can sustain long-term professional development initiatives in which we have collaborated. Our services have a strong training and coaching component to help transfer knowledge into practice. Our clients have given raving feedback about the quality of the content and delivery of our services.
• We blend science, art, human connection, and joy in all the services that we offer.
• We would love to hear from you! Our collaborations with Head Start organizations start with setting up a call, getting to know each other and understanding your organization’s needs. During the initial call we offer a free consultation that includes practical strategies that you can start implementing right away. After the call, we would be very happy to prepare specialized proposals based on your organization’s specific professional development needs.

Contact: Erika Flores, www.childrenflow.com, erika@childrenflow.com, 773-480-4205

The Center for Optimal Brain Integration trains, coaches, and consults on trauma-responsive practices and strategies that build resilience for all ages.  We strive to give every child and adult a voice through a wide range of trauma-responsive services that are uniquely designed for your community.

The Center for Optimal Brain Integration® (COBI), launched in 2019 is built on over 30 years of experience in the field of trauma-responsive, engaging, strength-based and resilience-building practices.  When we launched COBI, there was a single objective, and that is to give a VOICE to all children and adults who have experienced trauma.

We wanted to offer an approach that is based on research and evidence-informed.  It is an approach that holds high-quality standards (we call it a North Star approach) without losing the core purpose (we call it the Heart of our work), helping children and adults find a path for healing.  We can’t afford to wait to build tools in our toolbox of responsive, engaging, and healing practices.

Our CEO and Founder Julie Kurtz is the co-author of 4 books on trauma creating a specialty of  enriching training and consultation for early childhood providers:

• Trauma-Informed Practices for Early Childhood Educators: Relationship-Based Approaches that Support Healing and Build Resilience in Young Children
• Culturally Responsive Self-Care Practices for Early Childhood Educators
• Trauma-Informed Practices for Early Childhood Educators: Creating and Sustaining Healing and Engaged Organizations (2021)
• Trauma-Responsive Family Engagement in Early Childhood: Practices for Equity and Resilience (2021)

At the Center for Optimal Brain Integration® (COBI), we offer many platforms for adult learning for smaller programs to larger counties.

We provide a wide range of training and consultation for:

• Educators K-12
• Infant, Toddler and Preschool Early Educators
• Community Funders and Advocates
• Parents and Caregivers
• Foster and Resource Parents
• First Responders
• Administrators and Leaders
• Clinicians
• Social Service and Therapeutic Providers
• Organizations
• Supervisor and Leaders
• Medical Professionals
• Community-Based Organizations
• Early Interventionists and Intellectual and Disability Coordinators
• Family Engagement Specialists

Some examples of services that can be provided might be:

• Training Virtually and Onsite
• Coaching Virtually and Onsite
• Strategic Planning
• Foster and Resource Parent Support
• Trauma-Responsive and Resilience Learning Circles
• Book Club – Specialized Learning and Reflecting
• Office Hours for Consultation
• Asynchronous Learning Platform
• Family Engagement and Parent Training
• Training of Trainer Institutes for Authorization

Contact: https://www.optimalbrainintegration.com/