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Melanie Shinbaum leads the Nashville Early Education Coalition Fund, a Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee initiative, working to address the childcare crisis by aligning resources and stakeholders to improve accessibility, affordability, and quality of services. She collaborates with the Advisory Council to establish a citywide Early Childhood Education system, expand funding streams, enhance provider quality, and advocate for policy support.
Melanie has 25 years of experience in various leadership roles across nonprofits, including CEO of St. Luke’s Community House, Executive Director & Development Director at Fannie Battle Day Home for Children, and positions at United Way of Metropolitan Nashville, among others. CFMT’s commitment to the Nashville area community lead her to this role.
“By serving as a fiscal sponsor to allow community-based initiatives to grow roots and build trajectory while also providing needed infrastructure, CFMT is the perfect place to incubate the newly formed Nashville Early Education Coalition (NEEC),” says Melanie. “NEEC will be working to address the childcare crisis affecting families across our community by aligning resources, strategies, policy agendas, and key stakeholders around a shared vision to improve accessibility, affordability, and quality of childcare services for families — all of which I feel are perfectly aligned with CFMT’s strategic work in the community.”
Away from work Melanie enjoys spending time with her husband and two children. On any given evening or weekend, she can typically be found on the sidelines of one of her children’s various sports activities. She is a serial-hobbyist (latest hobby is learning the beautiful art of stained glass,) “crazy plant lady” with way too many plants, and loves to curl up with a good book or work a jigsaw puzzle on a rainy day.
Melanie is also an avid lover of the outdoors and for her nothing beats a beautiful weekend camping at one of our amazing TN State Park campgrounds (She is currently working towards a goal to camp at all of the TN State Parks with marked 19 off the list so far!)
