John Hults

Chief Operating Officer

As chief operating officer, John Hults manages Committee for Children’s strategic planning from a business and operations standpoint. With experience as a leader of strategic business partnerships and chief financial officer at Global Scholar, John brings a strong finance and operations background to the team. Before joining Committee for Children, John founded two successful digital imaging companies, Azul Images and Blue Jean Images, which operated in international markets. John’s previous positions include director of financial analysis and process at McCaw Cellular/ATT Wireless and vice president of financial planning and analysis at Getty Images.

Koua Franz

Chief of Staff

Koua Franz emigrated to the United States in the early 1980s as part of the Hmong refugee resettlement and learned firsthand about the inequities that existed in education and community systems. She credits her culture’s ethos for the resilience to successfully navigate academic and cultural challenges in her formative years. “SEL builds a foundational skill set that many cultures embrace,” says Koua. “Critical skills like self-awareness and responsible decision-making were encompassed in my family traditions.”

Koua knew from early on that she wanted to solve problems (for the better part of her childhood that meant wanting to be an FBI agent), but as an adult she became interested in the notion of organization development and continuous learning models. Today, Koua is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and innovator—and Committee for Children’s first chief of staff. With experience in education, philanthropy, and nonprofit sectors, Koua’s nearly two decades of executive leadership in supporting and developing strong teams, building leadership capacities, and designing and creating learning organizations have positioned her well to join our growing organization.

“My job is to bring the best out of people, from creating strategies to enhance our organization’s effectiveness, to building individual capacities, to ensuring we’re reflective of the community we’re serving,” says Koua.

A champion of equity and access for underserved children and communities, Koua has been recognized by CASEL for excellence in expanding the practice of SEL, notably in her role as chief of staff to the superintendent at the Sacramento City Unified School District, where she oversaw the districtwide implementation of SEL curriculum, including Second Step.

Koua has a master’s in public administration from National University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from University of the Pacific. She is co-owner of strategic planning firm John Gooder LLC and most recently served as director to the office of the president while also serving as the communication and learning director at the Stuart Foundation.

The mother of three sees her SEL superpower as being a lifelong learner, crediting her natural inclination to improve and expand her own worldview with her drive to continuously improve the world around her.

“When I learned of Committee for Children’s commitment to positively transforming the social-emotional well-being of 100 million children annually by 2028, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of,” says Koua. “This is a huge investment in what we want to see in the world ahead of us.”

Mia Doces

Vice President of Innovation

After beginning her career in media production, Mia Doces found herself drawn to the idea of making a positive difference through education. She spent the next decade gaining insight into the barriers kids face when it comes to learning, developing a particular interest in bullying prevention while serving as a teacher and counselor in Seattle Public Schools.

In her role at Committee for Children as senior program designer and media specialist, Mia played an integral part in creating our social-emotional learning (SEL) and anti-bullying curricula and trainings. Today she is at the helm of Committee for Children’s Innovation Lab, exploring new avenues for broadening the organization’s impact through SEL both in and outside the classroom, from conceptualizing a smart toy to help kids self-regulate to driving partnerships with like-minded organizations such as the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

Mia received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Vassar College and a master of education from Western Washington University. She has worked on state- and national-level youth initiatives, having served on the Washington State legislative anti-bullying work group and advised organizations from Sesame Workshop to the Born This Way Foundation. From 2007–2011 she co-chaired Prevention Works in Seattle, a Drug-Free Communities coalition, and in 2011 also received the CINE Golden Eagle Award for her work on the Second Step music video series.

She sees her SEL superpower as relationship building. “The most successful projects involve bringing together the right people at the right time, and building teams that are passionate and excited about the work,” she says. “Outside of the office I’d call myself an extreme extrovert—I would go to a concert or meet up with friends every night of the week if I could!”

Find more of Mia’s work here:

Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University
Happy to Be Me: An Anti-Bullying Discussion video series, Sesame Workshop

Tia Kim, PhD

Vice President of Education, Research & Impact

Tia Kim decided she wanted to be a psychologist at age fourteen—though unlike many teens, she stuck to her plan.

Tia began her career in academia but later decided she wanted to see her research in action helping children and youth. Today, she leads our team of education designers and research scientists working to develop and evaluate the quality, effectiveness, and reach of Committee for Children’s programs. Tia is a driving force of our organization’s efforts to continually gather information about implementation fidelity, advance the evaluation process, focus on continuous improvement and learning, and promote partnerships within the field. She considers these factors essential to carrying out our mission of advancing the safety and well-being of children through social-emotional learning (SEL) and helping us increase our impact to reach our goal of positively transforming the social-emotional well-being of 100 million children annually by 2028.

Drawn toward understanding the unique needs and developmental tasks of adolescents, Tia received her doctorate in developmental psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and completed three years of post-doctoral training at the Academic Center of Excellence on Youth Violence Prevention, where her research focused on the etiology and prevention of youth violence and aggression. Before joining Committee for Children, she served as an assistant professor in the department of human development and family studies at Penn State Brandywine.

Tia sees her organizational skills as her SEL superpower, whether it’s meticulously planning a family trip or managing multiple projects and deadlines as she works to answer questions around what make social-emotional learning programs successful.

“We track the pulse of the education field and push the envelope wherever possible to innovate, whether it’s in the form of iterative development or developing the evaluation process itself. We ask—and try to answer—the really hard questions so we can help move the field forward as a whole, not just our organization.”

Khan Klatt

Vice President of Technology

Born in Turkey, Khan Klatt attended Department of Defense schools overseas before moving to the United States full-time to attend college in the Pacific Northwest in the early 90s. His interest in computers and the internet coincided with the early commercial pioneering stage of the web, which led to his co-founding a regional internet service provider startup in Bellingham, WA, and later leading the technology divisions at several tech startups.

As vice president of Technology at Committee for Children, Khan leverages his expertise in developing publishing pipelines for education content, as well as designing and implementing scalable, consumer-facing software, to support our commitment to positively transform the social-emotional well-being of 100 million children annually by 2028. “Building toward our ambitious future goals includes building out our technological capability and infrastructure,” he says. “The only constant in software engineering is constant change.”

Khan recognized the internet as the technology of the future while a student at Western Washington University, where he studied computer science and physics. Most recently, he led continuous integration and continuous delivery strategy for McGraw-Hill Education as senior director of web application engineering.

Khan sees perspective taking as his SEL superpower. In the constantly evolving tech landscape this might mean understanding when and why people use a particular technology, and in the constantly evolving journey of parenthood, it often means seeing things from his son’s point of view.

Kelsie Longbrake

Vice President of Finance & Operations

As the director of finance and operations, Kelsie Longbrake contributes to high level, day-to-day and strategic operations while also overseeing the company’s finances, facilities, operations, human resources, and warehouse. Kelsie is a key leader on the management team and a valuable team member on the board finance committee. She has worked for Committee for Children since 1998, beginning as an accountant, then taking on multiple management positions before moving into her current role as director of finance and operations. Kelsie holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from City University of Seattle and has over 20 years of experience in the field.

Andrea Lovanhill

Vice President of Marketing & Client Relations

Andrea Lovanhill has worked for Committee for Children since 2007. She oversees all aspects of client and product support for and marketing of the Second Step program. Andrea holds a masters in communications in digital media from the University of Washington. She has been working in the field of social-emotional learning for more than eight years and in nonprofit management for more than 10 years. Her past experience includes working with nonprofit organizations and schools to build products and marketing campaigns designed to engage kids and families in conservation, social-emotional learning, bullying prevention, and child safety. Her academic and career focus is on how nonprofit and social enterprises can build digital experiences and use other technology to improve their own products and help schools boost social-emotional competencies.

Polly Stansell

Vice President of Product

As a teacher, Polly Stansell saw firsthand the benefits of kids feeling safe and developing positive relationships with peers and adults, and firmly believes social-emotional skills play a vital role in education.

Drawn to Committee for Children’s mission of advancing the safety and well-being of children through social-emotional learning (SEL) and to the opportunity to raise awareness of SEL, Polly joined the organization in 2018 as our first vice president of Product. She is responsible for product vision and strategy, ensuring the tools we develop are impactful and engaging for kids, educators, and families alike.

Polly earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Westminster College, and later, intrigued by how technology could be used in the classroom in the pursuit of learning, her master’s degree in educational technology at San Diego State University. For more than two decades she has worked to develop products that effectively utilize technology in the education space, most recently as senior vice president of strategy & product development at Voyager Sopris Learning and senior director of digital learning solutions at McGraw-Hill Education.

A member of numerous industry-related organizations, Polly has also served as a board member and on the strategic council for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and worked on the Corporate Advisory Council for Excellence in Education.

Polly sees her SEL superpower as her ability to make responsible decisions. “Building a successful product takes thoughtful consideration and being able to see the big picture,” she says. “And my family would agree that I have no problem making decisions, whether it’s picking a restaurant or planning a vacation.”