Staff Roster and
Biographic Profiles

Jane Wiechel, Associate Superintendent
Center for Students, Families and Communities
The Ohio Department of Education

At the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), Jane Wiechel provides leadership for efforts related to early learning and school readiness, special education, reading improvement, gifted education, child nutrition and student interventions. She also oversees the state schools for blind and deaf. Wiechel served on the Governing Board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children from 1997-2005, and for the last three of these years as president.

In a previous position, Wiechel served as the Chief of Staff and Policy Director for Governor Taft’s Ohio Family and Children First Initiative. Through this endeavor, she led efforts that built collaborations at the state and county levels to support improved services to children and youth.

In 1992, Wiechel was instrumental in the establishment of ODE’s Division of Early Childhood Education, the nation’s first in a state department of education. Due to her collaborative leadership, Ohio led the nation in support for state-funded Head Start and in childcare partnership programs. Before holding her state-level positions, Wiechel was a classroom teacher at the preschool, elementary and junior high school levels. She has taught regular education, special education and adult basic literacy education.

Stacie G. Goffin, Director
School Readiness Solutions Group

Stacie Goffin’s career has focused on improving the quality of early care and education programs by acting as an agent for change. As principal of Goffin Strategy Group in Washington, D.C., she presently leads and supports change by helping set and implement strategic direction. Recent and current work includes efforts to support service-learning and develop systems that support quality early care and education. She recently consulted for five years with the National Association for the Education of Young Children with responsibility for overseeing the establishment of national early childhood program standards and accreditation criteria for programs serving children from birth through kindergarten.

Goffin spent seven years as a Senior Program Officer at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation where she co-founded the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, an initiative that resulted in $63 million in investments for quality improvements in the bi-state Kansas City community. Prior to that, she taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies.

Jolie Bain Pillsbury, President
Sherbrooke Consulting, Inc.
Facilitator, School Readiness Solutions Group

Pillsbury has worked in more than 40 states and with local, state and federal governments, foundations and other non-profit organizations in defining organizational missions, visions and values as well as action-oriented strategies. During her 33-year career, she has served as deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare and as planner/information systems advisor at the Texas Department of Public Welfare. As an IBM management consultant, she also has consulted with state and local governments on using information technology to achieve organizational change.

Among the organizations she has advised using her highly participatory process are the Administration for Children and Families, the Bureau of Primary Health Care, the Health Resources Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Excellence in Government. She has written on many topics, including organizational change, public sector leadership and implementation strategies, case management, planning and evaluation research.

Donald S. Van Meter, Communications Director
School Readiness Solutions Group

Don Van Meter is president of VMC Consulting Group, which provides high-quality strategic communications and public affairs counsel, products and services to education, health care, public sector, not-for-profit and business clients. For more than a decade, Van Meter served as an assistant professor and associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University. While on leave from Ohio State, he served as director of communication and policy development in the Ohio Attorney General's Office.

Among the organizations he has assisted with strategic planning, issues management and strategic communications are the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, Ohio Board of Regents, Teacher Quality Partnership and The Ohio State University. Van Meter assisted in staffing the Governor’s Commissions on Student Success, Teaching Success, and Higher Education & the Economy, as well as the State Board of Education’s Task Force on Quality High Schools.

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