Board of Directors / About Miriam

Miriam Calderón

Vice President for Impact, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

As the vice president for impact, W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), Miriam Calderón will oversee program portfolios supporting knowledge and learning; impact investing; and policy advocacy, supporting efforts to achieve WKKF goals on behalf of children, families and communities. In this role, Calderón will lead and develop programming visions and strategies leading towards sustainable impact. She joined WKKF on Nov. 15, 2024.

Previously, Calderón was the chief policy officer at ZERO TO THREE, where she led the development and implementation of their policy agenda, priorities and strategies, and had oversight of the Policy Center, focused on federal and state policy and advocacy.

Calderón joined ZERO TO THREE after serving as deputy assistant secretary for early learning at the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden Administration. She also advised the White House on early learning policy at the Domestic Policy Council and at the Department of Health and Human Services, during the Obama Administration. In 2017, she served as Oregon’s early learning system director, where she led an agency responsible for the administration of child care, preschool and home visiting programs and supports for the early childhood workforce, overseeing the largest expansion of early childhood investments in the state’s history.

Prior to Oregon, she served as the senior director of early learning at the Bainum Family Foundation, where she shaped a new $10 million philanthropic investment in a comprehensive birth-to-three system for the District of Columbia. She was also a senior fellow with the BUILD Initiative, leading BUILD’s work related to dual language learners and serving as a faculty member for BUILD’s Equity Leaders Action Network. Previously, Calderón served as director of early childhood education at District of Columbia Public Schools, where she oversaw Head Start and pre-kindergarten programs, including helping to implement universal pre-kindergarten. Calderón also served as associate director of education policy at the UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza), a Hispanic civil rights organization, where she focused on early education policy for Latinx, immigrant, and dual language learner children.

She began her career in early childhood as a mental health consultant in Head Start programs in Portland, Oregon. Calderón holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Delaware and a Master of Social Work degree from Portland State University.