Lisa Gordon

Lisa Gordon
Senior Director of Training, Technical Assistance and Professional Development and Professor of Practice
Children's Equity Project, Arizona State University

Lisa Gordon has worked in early childhood education for the past 25 years designing and delivering professional development, training, technical assistance, and programs at both the state and federal levels that facilitate the well-being of children and families. Central to her work has been elevating issues of equity, race, and bias to support equitable educational practices, programs, and policies to affect systemic change. Much of her career has been devoted to advocating on half of children and families from historically marginalized communities and communities of color. Lisa is co-founder of Colorful World, a women-owned diversity educational consulting firm whose mission is to facilitate the creation of equitable and inclusive learning environments that empower all children and families to succeed. Prior to her work with the CEP, she served as Project Director, School Systems Partnerships and Programs and Associate Director of Early Childhood Programs for the Center for Culture, Race & Equity at the Education Center at Bank Street College. Lisa was an Early Childhood Development Trainer with the Office of Head Start National Center on Culture and Linguistic Responsiveness where she co-developed research to practice materials for dissemination and facilitated trainings across the country. She has served as Director of the Child Care Resource and Referral Agency and the Professional Development Registry for the District of Columbia and on several national school readiness and research initiatives to close opportunity gaps for children from marginalized communities and communities of color. Lisa has been a mentor and coach to elementary school principals to help strengthen their capacity to lead high-quality early childhood programming and to improve the quality and coherence of teaching and learning across the PreK to Grade 3 continuum.