Helen H. Raikes, PhD, is the Willa Cather Professor Emeritus of Child, Youth, and Family Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a current board member of ZERO TO THREE.
Contributions to the Field
Dr. Raikes is a longtime innovator in early childhood education, focusing on using research to improve outcomes and opportunities for children with low income before school begins and on optimizing growth trajectories of children’s early emotional, language, and physiological development. She is a frequent presenter on early childhood, Head Start, and child care research project, and provided leadership for the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, which began when she was a Society for Research in Child Development Executive Policy Fellow at the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Recently, she completed a cross-cultural study of children with low income’s self-regulation with collaborators in Ankara, Turkey, and is involved in projects in Colombia and Rwanda that focus on water quality and child stunting. She lives on a family farm that has been in her husband’s family for generations and is the mother of three and grandmother of six children. Dr. Raikes holds a BS in Journalism from Iowa State University, an MS in Human Development from the University of California-Davis, and a PhD in Child Development from Iowa State University.
Affiliations
- Willa Cather Professor Emeritus of Child, Youth, and Family Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- Former Board Member, Nebraska Children and Families Foundation
- Former Board Member, Sixpence Early Childhood Partnership
- Trustee and Former Board Member, Lincoln Community Foundation
- Former Board Member, Buffett Early Childhood Fund
