Allan Shedlin, Jr., has used his entrepreneurial, consulting and administrative skills throughout his 40-year career working with children of all ages, families and those who serve them. Through his frequent broadcast interviews, speaking engagements, video productions, and published commentary, he has steadily established a broad national platform as an authority on parenting, education, and child-focused public policy.

His commentaries have been distributed by The New York Times News Service, Hearst Newspapers, The Cox News Service, and have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ventura County Star (CA), Beaumont Enterprise (TX), and numerous other local papers and newsletters. Shedlin has written for such professional publications as Education Week, Phi Delta KAPPAN, and Principal magazine. He also has produced an online column, "FamilySense," as a special project for the Benton Foundation in Washington, DC, and authored two regular columns - "Raising Families" and "Daddying." He was the featured Father's Day guest on Voice of America's international call-in program, "Talk To America."

Shedlin founded and served as Executive Director of the New York-based National Elementary School Center (NESC) from 1985 through 1994. Dedicated to the optimal development and learning of every child and to helping professionals and the public address children's needs, NESC's interdisciplinary focus stimulated the collaboration of child-serving professionals in education, health, social services, government, and business, together with families and the public.

While with the NESC, Shedlin conducted senior staff briefings for and served as consultant to the U.S. Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of the Surgeon General. He also served as a consultant to many state Departments of Education throughout the country. He was appointed to Education Daily's "Consensus Panel," which invited the 10 most important educators in the country to comment bi-monthly on key education issues. Shedlin was co-chair of the Weston, CT Commission for Children and Youth, where he helped establish a permanent Town office for Children and Youth - it became a model for communities throughout the state. He has been a member of numerous boards and advisory groups; he is currently a member of the Montgomery County (MD) Commission on Children & Youth and the National Advisory Board of ChildTrends (Washington, DC).

Prior to his work at NESC, Shedlin served eight years as principal of the Ethical Culture School in New York City. He has taught in graduate school (Bank Street College of Education) through nursery school, and has worked in a wide range of urban and suburban institutions in both public and private sectors. His students have included gifted, emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, as well as "average" children. Before devoting full-time to writing, Shedlin maintained a private practice for short-term consultations with parents, children, and teachers regarding day-to-day concerns about schooling, parenting, child development, and children's educational needs. He has recently been named Project Director of the Dads Across America tour featuring the DaddyMobile.

In his 1985 editorial in Education Week, Shedlin asserted that elementary education was not receiving the attention it rightly deserved, and called for the appointment of a national commission to study the issue. Shortly thereafter, U.S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett created just such a commission, and invited Shedlin to participate. The commission's deliberations resulted in the publication of First Lessons, the first-ever federal report to focus exclusively on the elementary level of schooling.

Now living in suburban Maryland, Shedlin was born in New York City. He is a graduate of the Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools - Fieldston Lower School and Fieldston High School in New York City. He earned a B.A. in English, with a minor in Spanish, from Colgate University, an M.A. in Special and Elementary Education from Teacher's College at Columbia University, and has done extensive graduate work in Educational Administration at Fordham University. He is the dad of three and granddad of five.