“If a child has consistent access to high-quality care and education at an early age, it can change their life trajectory and that of their family. Ensuring all parents have access to this level of child-care and programming is fundamental to addressing wealth, health, and educational inequities and improving social mobility in our country.”
Charity Hallman spends her days investing in the future of families, children, and communities.
As vice president of community and economic development for HOPE, she works in her home state of Arkansas to build relationships and help organizations—particularly those led by people of color—secure capital for vital projects, like schools, affordable housing, and minority-owned businesses. Charity also leads HOPE’s education lending in a five-state region across the South.
Her educational work, in particular, is a passion. In her day-to-day efforts, she draws on more than 14 years of experience, most recently as finance director and then chief operating officer at KIPP Delta Public schools, which serves 1,300 students in rural Arkansas, and dating back to her earliest post-college work serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer, when she developed an elementary school mentoring program that connected kids to community members.
In between, she has served as the deputy director for fiscal policy at StudentsFirst, a nonprofit education reform organization, where she provided policy recommendations for state-level advocacy work in 18 states; worked in Washington, D.C.’s City Office of Budget and Planning as a Capital City Fellow; and spent four years in various leadership positions with the District’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education, all of which were focused on deploying resources wisely to improve student outcomes and better serve students with disabilities.
Charity earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Central Arkansas and her Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Delaware.
Organization
Hope Enterprise Corporation/Hope Federal Credit Union/Hope Policy Institute, known collectively as HOPE, Little Rock, AR
Area of Focus
Childcare and early education
Fellowship Project
Research barriers that hinder the growth and development of high-quality early care and education programs in resource constrained areas of Arkansas and to develop materials and policy recommendations that will lead to increased investment, so providers are able to build and grow their operations to better meet the needs of children and families.