For over thirty years, Joyce Shortt has held a variety of positions in early childhood and child care. Joyce was the Co-Director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time at Wellesley Centers from Women at Wellesley College for 10 years. Her work has involved direct service to children and families, program planning, policy, administration and advocacy. She served as a program manager for the Massachusetts Office for Children, and as the Executive Director of the Childcare Resource and Referral Center in Burlington, Vermont. While working at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health & Human Services, she coordinated the development of child care policies by state agencies. In these roles, she was responsible for developing child care policies and working to make quality child care available for all families. As the Senior Associate for Children’s Programs at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, she coordinated and implemented a ten-year program to end childhood poverty.

At NIOST, Joyce was the Project Director for the MOST Initiative, which was a multi-year, multi-million dollar initiative funded by the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, to improve the quantity and quality of opportunities for children in their out-of-school time in three urban areas. Projects worked on included MARS: the Massachusetts Afterschool Research Study, a study linking afterschool program features and youth outcomes, an investigation of supports and opportunities in out of school time for high school youth. Shortt directed research and evaluation projects relating to connecting afterschool programs and schools. Shortt facilitated the Cross-Cities Network for Leaders of Citywide After-school Initiatives. This project aimed to increase the knowledge base of leaders of large scale citywide after school initiatives and within those cities, to identify promising practices in the development of infrastructures that support after school programs. Joyce completed a strategic planning process to build a skilled and stable workforce for after school programs.

Joyce holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts. In addition to serving on many boards and associations focusing on child care and child protection, she has developed and taught numerous workshops on topics related to young children and child care.

Since 2006 Joyce has worked as an independent consultant on projects related to science in afterschool, community building for families with young children, and connecting public schools to out-of-school time programs.