Janna Wagner
All our Kin Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer, Lecturer in Education Studies
Ms. Wagner co-teaches with Jessica Sager the Education Studies Seminar “Child Care, Society, and Public Policy.” Janna was born and raised in New Haven and attended the New Haven Public Schools. She is the co-founder and chief learning officer of All Our Kin, a nationally recognized New Haven nonprofit that trains, supports and sustains family child care providers to ensure that children and families have the foundation for success in school and in life. Through All Our Kin, caregivers succeed as business owners; working parents find stable, high-quality care for their children; and children receive early learning experiences that lay the groundwork for achievement in school and beyond. She holds a B.A. in psychology from Yale University and an Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught in the South Bronx through Teach for America, and then joined the staff of the Boston Public Schools’ Center for Leadership Development before founding All Our Kin with Jessica Sager in 1999.
In 2001, Yale University and the City of New Haven awarded Janna a Seton Elm-Ivy Award for her efforts to strengthen partnerships and understanding among the New Haven and Yale communities. Active in the New Haven community, Janna is an Associate Fellow of Jonathan Edwards College at Yale University and founder of The Group with No Name, a social, civic organization that turns New Haven’s residents into citizens. Ms. Wagner serves as chair of the board of the Ulysses S. Grant Foundation, a sixty-four year old academic enrichment summer program, which brings together Yale and New Haven students on Yale’s campus. She is the chair of the advisory board for the Community Fund for Women and Girls, a component fund of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. Together with Jessica Sager, she was honored by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013 for her work with All Our Kin. In 2014, Janna was selected as a Class of 2014-16 Zero To Three Fellow, and she and Jessica Sager also received the “Living Our Beliefs Within Our Community” Award from the ACES Educational Foundation. Most recently, she was awarded the Yale Jefferson Award and was a Grand Prize recipient of the Roslyn S. Jaffe Awards and is a 2017 Pahara Aspen Fellow.