Judith Ennis provides technical assistance and project leadership in the areas of early childhood care and education, resource allocation and school finance, organizational development, systems change, and policy analysis, with an overarching focus on expanding equity. She is a senior manager for WestEd’s Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation team, which focuses on the role of funding streams in systems change.
Ennis was a lead writer for California’s Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Education for the Preschool Development Grant (2019) and served as a researcher and writer for California’s Master Plan for Early Learning and Care, a statewide initiative to expand access to early learning. Previously, Ennis served as Deputy Director of the National Center to Improve Social Emotional Learning and School Safety at WestEd.
Ennis began her career in the elementary school setting before shifting her work to the district, state, and federal levels. Before joining WestEd, Ennis served as a manager and deputy director (interim) for the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). In this role, she provided policy analysis, research, and direct stakeholder engagement to states and districts across the country, with a focus on recruiting and retaining excellent educators and addressing inequitable access to excellent educators in lowest-performing schools.
Ennis earned an MA at Columbia University’s Teachers College in curriculum and instruction with a focus on education policy.