Issaquah-based nonprofit Eastside Baby Corner is pleased to announce that Jack Edgerton has been named executive director.
Edgerton comes to EBC with over 25 years of executive director level nonprofit leadership, much of it in the field of child advocacy and programming.
“The board is very excited to have Jack Edgerton join Baby Corner as our new executive director, said Claudia Malone, president of the EBC Board of Directors. “We believe his leadership ability and passion for making a difference in the lives of young children, combined with the expertise and dedication of our current staff, board and volunteers, will equip EBC to meet or even exceed our ten-year goal of tripling the number of children we serve.”
A Seattle-area native, Edgerton most recently served as regional director at Girl Scouts of Washington. There he worked with over 5,000 volunteers in providing opportunities to more than 13,000 girls. Prior to this, he was the executive director of Facing the Future, an organization that provides science and technology education through a lens of environmental sustainability.
In addition, Edgerton served 12 years as executive director of Parent Trust, a 35-year-old organization dedicated to preventing child abuse and neglect through family skill building. He has been a volunteer with United Way of King County, Family Support Washington, Prevent Child Abuse America, Family Support America, Circle of Parents, Youth Development Executives of King County, Eastside Pathways and Parents as Teachers.
Edgerton brings an entrepreneurial spirit with him. He managed a merger between Parent Trust and Great Starts, creating the largest independent birth education program in Washington State. EBC feels that this experience makes him an ideal leader as EBC looks to fulfill its 10-year strategic goal of increasing its number of kids served by 300 percent, from 11,000 unduplicated to more than 30,000 kids per year.
“My vision for EBC is for it to continue to grow, serve more agencies in the area and ultimately more children and families,” Edgerton stated.” We will continue to be a gathering place for the community — volunteers, resources and funds. And we will be the connector for bringing that energy and those resources into the community.”
Founded by pediatric nurse practitioner, Karen Ridlon in 1990, EBC aids over 800 children each week. EBC helps kids thrive by providing basic necessities for children so that EBC’s partners — schools, human service agencies, food banks, hospitals — can help families become stable, safe, housed, fed and employed. Relying almost exclusively on volunteers, EBC takes in donations of children’s clothing and goods from the community and supplements donations with purchases of the absolute essentials for children, including baby food, formula, car seats, pack n’ plays and diapers.
As the vital safety net under family-assistance providers and families, EBC annually distributes over 70,000 health and care items for kids from birth through age 12 directly to agencies in King, south Snohomish, Kitsap and west Pierce counties. Volunteers contribute an average of 2,700 hours each month at the Issaquah Hub, EBC-West Sound and EBC-Northshore.
Find EBC on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/eastsidebabycorner and on Twitter and Instagram at @babycorner.
Shelves in the EBC warehouse are full of clothing for all ages. Nicole Jennings/staff photo
