Gerry Cobb serves as Director of the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, a national initiative of the JB and MK Pritzker Family Foundation focused on improved state policy and investment for children prenatal to age three and their families. The focus of the initiative particularly emphasizes healthy beginnings, high quality early care and education and support to families of infants and toddlers.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Ms. Cobb served as State Services Director for the BUILD Initiative for nearly seven years and was the primary liaison to states in supporting their efforts to build comprehensive early childhood systems. She also worked for 13 years for North Carolina’s Smart Start Initiative, creating the Smart Start National Technical Assistance Center (NTAC) while there and supporting states around the country that wanted to learn from North Carolina’s experience in the development of its own statewide comprehensive early childhood system.
Prior to her move into the early childhood realm, Ms. Cobb was Executive Director of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, a program officer for The Asia Foundation and Legislative Assistant to a Member of Congress.
Ms. Cobb is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2010, she took a sabbatical to travel and volunteer around the world, visiting every continent (including Antarctica) and nearly two dozen countries. Her volunteer efforts that year ranged from working with children with special needs in India, teaching English to orphans in Cambodia and looking after lions in Zambia and kangaroos in Australia.