Hedy is the founder and executive director of the non-profit initiative, Attendance Works (www.attendanceworks.org). Attendance Works is the nation’s “go to” resource for strategies to reduce chronic absence (missing more than 10% of school for any reason). Since its founding in 2010, Attendance Works successfully moved chronic absence from a little-known term to a required reporting and optional school accountability metric in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Hedy has spent three decades working in the fields of family support, family economic success, education and child development. She served as a senior program officer at the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and as co-director of California Tomorrow, a nonprofit committed to drawing strength from cultural, linguistic and racial diversity. In February 2013, Hedy was named by the White House as a Champion of Change for her commitment to furthering African American Education. She has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and B.A. from Occidental College.