Committee Member - Public Policy
After graduating from college, Linda Olivenbaum found temporary work as a substitute teacher in one of the Early Childhood programs in the Philadelphia public schools, and a love affair was born! She has remained in the field of Early Childhood Education (ECE) for more than forty years.
She continued to teach in the Philadelphia schools’ ECE programs for seventeen years, becoming a permanent teacher and earning her Master’s degree in ECE at night from Temple University.
When she, her husband and stepdaughter moved to California in 1985, she took a job as teacher/director in a yet-to-be-opened child care center in San Francisco. A few years later, she became Director of Lakeshore Children’s Center in Oakland, where she points to the establishment of a Children’s Peace Academy there as an accomplishment of which she is especially proud. In 1996, she moved on to work for the California Early Childhood Mentor Program which is located at Chabot College in Hayward. Hired as Assistant Director, she became Director of the program in 2004.
Other connections to the field of Early Care and Education include formerly teaching as an adjunct Instructor at Chabot College, previous service as Commissioner for First 5 Alameda County, serving as Public Policy Chair of the East Bay Affiliate of the California Association for the Education of Young Children, and as Vice Chair of the CAEYC Public Policy Committee. She was named as “Early Childhood Advocate of the Year” by the City of Berkeley in 2007. She is a consistent advocate for the ECE workforce, long championing better compensation, recognition and professional development support for those who perform the critical function of caring for our youngest children.
She and her husband live in Berkeley where they are active in local politics. She enjoys hiking, reading and travel.
