Joel Ryan is the Executive Director of the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP (WSA) based in Bellevue, WA. Joel leads the advocacy and profession development work of the Association and has been at the Association for the past 8 years. Prior to that Joel was the Government Affairs Director at the National Head Start Association where he worked as the liaison between the Head Start community, Congress, and the White House. Currently, he is a teaching associate at the University of Washington in the Department of Education and sits on the Serve Washington Commission. But his most important job is that of a dad to an 8 year old daughter who is in the second grade in the Lake Washington School District in Kirkland.