Director; Tacoma, WA

Beza began her career in education as a high school-to-college transition mentor, particularly working with first-generation students from under-resourced communities.  In 2007, she spent a year in a Head Start classroom, working with 3 and 4-year-old children to support their language and social-emotional development. This pivotal experience laid the foundation for years of impact-driven work in ECE supporting and leading various initiatives to increase equitable access to high-quality early care and education. 

A few of Beza’s notable accomplishments include:

• Creating culturally relevant professional development resources for Head Start educators and program directors, including tips and strategies for effective early learning leadership practices,
• Co-leading multi-year mixed-methods research to inform the redesign of Washington state’s quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), 
• Developing a state QRIS tool for school-age programs, and 
• Developing a national state pre-k policy assessment and implementation tool with input and iteration based on a dozen state agency leads input.  with a dozen states co-design and iteration process to support state evaluation a, advocates and policy experts. 

A throughline in Beza’s work is seeking and leveraging community input to ensure systems change is informed by those most impacted by the system. Beza enjoys working at the intersection of research, policy, and practice and has expertise in translating stakeholder input into actionable policy recommendations, tools, and resources. At Afton Partners, Beza has leveraged these skills to support client goals, including:

• Project management, stakeholder engagement, and data collection to understand the cost of programming and resource constraints for programs accessing state preschool funding. The impact of this work included improving equitable resource allocation to grantees and increasing access to and quality of programs. 
• Supporting a state in studying the compensation and benefits priorities and desires of the ECE workforce, and understanding the state’s limitations and opportunities to expand access to benefits. The impact of this work is a research study with actionable recommendations to increase access to health care, retirement, and paid time off benefits to the ECE workforce. 
• Supported stakeholder engagement to inform state-funded early childhood workforce grants, leading to nation-leading funding to strengthen and stabilize the child care workforce through increased compensation.
• Facilitated stakeholder engagement to inform a state FY25-27 Child Care Development Funds (CCDF) Plan. The impact of this work included strengthening state and stakeholder partnerships by establishing best practices in community engagement.

Beza believes in continuous quality improvement and leads with a growth mindset. In addition to 15 years of experience in education, Beza holds a master’s degree in education policy from the University of Washington as well as bachelor’s degrees in psychology and French.  Beza lives in Tacoma, WA with her husband and two young kids who bring her so much joy and remind her every day of the essential roles early care and education professionals play.