Principal Early Childhood Technical Assistance Specialist, SRI Education
Judith Sikora, MA, is a principal early childhood technical assistance specialist with more than 30 years of experience in the field of early childhood education (ECE), including leading state and federal initiatives and projects. She specializes in supporting programs and system revisions to promote access to high-quality child care options for all families. Sikora also has expertise in family engagement, research-to-practice program models, ECE workforce strategies, online learning, early learning and child development, organizational collaboration with partners, and child care policy. In her work with national centers, Sikora has used her management skills and subject matter expertise to design and create technical assistance resources on the national and state levels.
At SRI, Sikora applies her deep understanding of early childhood systems to multiple projects. For example, in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and Department of Education, she led the development of a comparable competencies pathway tool and companion points system framework to align placement on a wage scale for ECE professionals. Through the project, Sikora and a team of SRI and Think Small early childhood experts developed recommendations for DHS consideration to design multiple pathways that incorporate ECE professionals’ lived experience, professional accomplishments, and formal education in order to determine their placement on a wage scale. She continues to apply her deep understanding of early childhood systems to other work as well, here at SRI.
Before joining SRI, Sikora was a senior advisor at Child Care Aware of America, where she designed and created an organization-wide quality child care initiative that was implemented nationally over a 2-year period. This initiative engaged child care providers, families, child care resource and referral agencies, state leaders and administrators, and other interest holders from across the country. The initiative showcased current research-to-practice models for quality child care, engagement strategies and activities, analysis of current national data and identification of trends, and ideas for state system reform and innovation opportunities designed to shape the future of quality child care systems and delivery.
Additionally, while serving as director of the Head Start Collaboration Project in New York, Sikora designed and implemented a cohort model for early childhood undergraduate students, engaging numerous colleges and universities and developing state-level workforce strategies for higher education. This initiative was funded by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Region II. Sikora’s previous work also includes early childhood classroom teaching, college and university instruction and undergraduate/graduate student advisement, state government project leadership, early childhood program administration, cable television programming, and designing, planning, implementing, and sustaining state and national partnerships and special projects.
Sikora holds a MA in leadership in early childhood education, with a supervisor’s certificate from Kean University. She has a BA in early childhood education with a teaching certificate for K–6, with a preschool endorsement, also from Kean University.
Key projects
- Minnesota Comparable Competencies Pathways to Wage Scale Levels Project