Meg Pienkowski, Ph.D.
Senior Program Officer, Early Childhood 

Meg Pienkowski, Ph.D. is Senior Program Officer, Early Childhood for Robins Foundation.

Meg has over twenty years of diverse direct service experience and over six years of systems-level work focused on early education and care. She is a former preschool teacher, preschool director, and elementary school teacher who left the classroom to focus on early childhood efforts after witnessing the huge disparities in school readiness evidenced by her incoming kindergarten students from different backgrounds. Meg comes to Robins from Smart Beginnings Greater Richmond (now Thrive Birth to Five), where she was the Vice President of Community Partnerships and Programs. While passionate about all things early childhood, Meg is particularly interested in systems change, holistic early childhood development, and supporting the entire ecosystem of early care and education.

Married to a public high school teacher, Meg is the mother of three grown sons and one large dog. She loves children, comfy clothes and pretty much any outdoor activity. She dislikes mean people, driving in traffic and saying “good-bye” to people she loves. Meg earned her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, her master’s in Developmental Education
from U.C. Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from VCU’s School of Education.