Brenda Blasingame joined the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation in 2020 as a Program Officer on the Pritzker Children’s Initiative team. The initiative is a national effort focused exclusively on expanding high quality supports and services to families during the foundational period of the first 1000 days, which is prenatal to 3 years of age of their child’s life. Her work is focused on strategy development in the following areas: child well-being and child welfare prevention, work with and in the Latino/x and Native American communities, lived experience and parent/community leadership and justice equity diversity and inclusion efforts. She also holds a portfolio of grants supporting and working with five states (NE, NV, WI, SC and TX) as well as a group of community innovation grantees and national grantee partners.
Since 2000 Ms. Blasingame’s work has been focused on early childhood development and education issues with a strong emphasis on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion. Most recently, Ms. Blasingame served as the Executive Director for HealthConnect One where she was responsible for leading this national organization’s work on peer-to-peer support during the first 1000 days encompassing pregnancy, birth and early parenting. This work focused on developing strategies to achieve birth equity, community level systems change and advocacy for maternal, infant and early childhood health and wellness in communities that are marginalized as a result of social oppression. Prior to joining the staff at HealthConnect One she worked over the past 20 years on early childhood development in California as the founding Executive Director First Five Contra Costa; in Washington as a founding staff member of Thrive Washington and nationally as the Senior Director of Programs and Partnerships with Save the Children in its United States division overseeing educational (prenatal through elementary school) and psychosocial programming.