Early Childhood Policy Leader Katie Hamm Joins Erikson

As a child who wanted to be a teacher, Kathleen (Katie) Hamm, Visiting Professor at Erikson Institute, first fell in love with Head Start in middle school. She and her classmates recorded themselves reading children’s books onto cassette tapes and brought the tapes to a Head Start center. In high school, Katie was a “learn and serve” volunteer who helped with Head Start family literacy nights.

“It was such a cool program,” she says. “The event was held at a Lutheran church, and I watched the minister making a plate of food for a Muslim child who was going to eat it after sundown. It was a night for everyone—the parents got programming, the young kids had activities, and the older kids had tutoring. That really hooked me.”

Early childhood and advocacy

The experience sparked Hamm’s interest in public programs that centered community interests and needs. In college she studied child psychology as well as government, and she remembers a course, “Developmental Psychology and Public Policy” that pulled it all together for her. She got an internship at the National Head Start Association where she was immersed in early childhood research and advocacy. “It was a good fit for me,” Hamm says.

Hamm’s career led her to work at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a policy and budget analyst. She served as Vice President of Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan, progressive policy institute and then as an early childhood policy advisor on the Biden-Harris transition team. After eight years at CAP, Hamm left to become Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a federal agency that oversees Head Start.

An ending and beginning

Hamm’s time at ACF ended in January 2025 when she left as part of the presidential transition. However, Hamm had already started preparing for her next act.

“When you are a political appointee you don’t know what the future holds in an election year,” Hamm says. To handle the uncertainty that started immediately after the November election, she started reading early childhood course syllabi as a coping mechanism, “Just thinking about how I could contribute if I wasn’t in my role any longer.”

An introduction by Jennifer Park, Interim Executive Director of Erikson’s Office of Sponsored Projects and Research (OSPR) to Erikson’s Dean of Faculty, Maxine McKinney de Royston led to Hamm coming to Erikson, to work under a one-year program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

“Given the current attacks on education, and on Head Start specifically, this is a critical time for Erikson to learn from deep subject matter experts like Katie. While at Erikson, Katie will be supporting federal, state and community-based policy, leadership and advocacy development by helping us—faculty, staff, students—better understand how federal policy levers work and how we can use them to support systems change in the early childhood education landscape and workforce,” says McKinney de Royston.

For example, one project Hamm is working on involves documenting key knowledge from former federal officials and other stakeholders to create a knowledge base on implementing and managing ACF programs.

“As part of her role, Katie will also collaborate and engage with faculty, students, and staff through workshops, guest lectures, and other activities that offer opportunities for us at Erikson to learn from Katie’s expertise and her to learn from ours,” adds McKinney de Royston.

Preserving knowledge to build back

“One of the things I want to think about with the faculty at Erikson is how can we make sure that we are engaging in the right way with the federal funded programs?” Hamm says. “If there is going to be a fight for Head Start…, how can we support the fight as an institute of higher education?”

The purpose of Hamm’s writing project is to capture as much knowledge as possible from seasoned federal experts and others in the early childhood field, to create a knowledge base for future use.

“For the people who got fired, we need to keep them in the ECE field because we need to keep all the talent we can,” Hamm says. “It’s very much a preservation tactic so we can hit the ground running when there is an opportunity. “It’s important to fight in the moment but also take the long view…. I do think we can build back.”

A parent of two young children, Hamm lives in Washington, D.C. and will work remotely. She looks forward to learning from the people at Erikson, like Juliet Bromer, Research Professor and national expert in home-based child care.

“How can I be helpful at this time?” is the question Hamm asks herself now. “You can either mourn what you lost or embrace what is in front of you. I hope to make the most of this opportunity and connect with the resources and history at Erikson,” she says.