What do you get when you connect a leader responsible for introducing major shifts in thinking about early childhood education to the province of Ontario, with an insightful, high-energy RECE who works everyday to bring those shifts to life in an early childhood classroom? You get magic!

Dani Williams-Long is a Registered Early Childhood Educator and a Toddler Educator at the Ingersoll Children’s Center, Oxford Community Child Care. Dani graduated from Georgian College with her ECE in 2007 with Honours, and she is currently attending Conestoga College to become a Resource Consultant.

For the past 15 years, Dani has been working with families and children from infancy to school age across many capacities; day camps, extended day school age care, licensed home childcare and center-based childcare. Within these roles, Dani has supported individual children’s developmental needs on a one-to-one capacity alongside other professionals and families within the childcare space. She has run a successful play based licenced home childcare, worked to facilitate group-based care and high-quality programming, collaborated with families to increase connections and engagement and most recently has begun to work in a leadership capacity to mentor and inspire colleagues.

Jim Grieve served as Assistant Deputy Minister of Early Years for the Ontario Ministry of Education from 2009-2015. He was responsible for the introduction of full-day kindergarten, as well as other child care and family support programs. Following an exemplary career as a teacher and in educational leadership, Jim served as Director of Education for Ottawa-Carleton before heading up Peel District School Board, Canada’s second largest school board. Jim is currently the CEO of the Retired Teachers of Ontario, an organization of 82,000 retirees from the educator community including staff from every role in the early years, K-12 and post-secondary systems.