New child care executive director brings background in business, nonprofit leadership

This paid piece is sponsored by EmBe.

Like many people, Brandon Hanson never thought much about child care until his own family needed it.

“My wife just had a baby in October, and we learned how difficult it is to find care for an infant,” he said.

“We got the last spot at our center nine months before we needed it, which was eye-opening. It was a challenging place to be with balancing finding the absolute highest-quality care for the most important part of our life and with what we could afford. On the other side, we also knew how important it was that our child’s direct-care provider made a good wage. It’s a tough spot to be in all around for both parents and the industry.”

In his new role, Hanson hopes to change that.

He recently became the executive director of child care and school-age care for EmBe after being drawn to the opportunity by the broader mission.

“The rest of us can’t really go to work without child care, and the impact of that appealed to me – the weight of what it means to do the work was really exciting,” he said. “It was that combined with how the EmBe team talked about the opportunity in terms of culture. That’s something I’m very passionate about, and EmBe is very intentional about its culture.”

Throughout his interview process, “every person I met said they absolutely love working here, and they don’t want to leave, so that was impactful enough for me to leave another role I was passionate about,” he said.

Hanson comes to EmBe from a background in nonprofits, most recently as director of museums and SculptureWalk at Washington Pavilion Management Co.

His education, however, is in business, and he said he looks forward to embracing it at EmBe.

“I feel comfortable managing budgets, strategic planning and coaching employees,” he said. “Building people up to be better than they were yesterday is incredibly appealing to me and the kind of work I want to do.”

Hanson brings a new, refreshing skill set to EmBe’s leadership team, CEO Kerri Tietgen said.

“Brandon completes our team with procedural, project management and operations leadership. He’s a true servant leader and an outstanding fit for our child care and school-age care leadership team,” she said. “His skills complement our outstanding teachers providing direct care and education to students, our managers who have strength with people leadership and child care operations, and our curriculum team that focuses on educational excellence.”

More broadly, Hanson has brought a complementary skill set to the entire EmBe leadership team, Tietgen continued.

“Brandon’s fresh perspective and consistent leadership style allows our team to continue serving this community with excellence,” she said. “He allows us to deliver exceptional service while creating the culture that EmBe believes in.”

Hanson’s role does not involve directly working with kids; he will oversee a team of six leaders who guide EmBe’s child care facilities and school-age care programming. EmBe provides care for more than 900 children in Sioux Falls locations, Harrisburg and Mitchell.

“Right now, we’re diving into a lot of basics on the business side, updating standard operating procedures and written knowledge transfer plans to ensure everyone is successful,” he said. “So one of the big initial goals is to formalize much of that over the next few months, document it and tighten up the machine before we move on to growth.”

EmBe is a leader locally and has the ability to expand its services so long as the team continues to grow and thrive, Hanson said.

“I have a servant leader mentality. I flip the traditional org chart upside down, so I’m here to serve my team, and they’re here to serve kids and families, and I think the rest of our leaders feel the same way,” he said. “I want our team to know, no matter where you join us in your career, that we’re here to build you up and build your skills so you can move up as it’s a fit for you.”

EmBe enjoys “a lot of trust and reputation,” he added. “There are a lot of rural communities we could potentially serve. We hear of facilities closing daily because they can’t keep up with the existing model. We could help families losing child care and employees losing jobs and continue to build on what’s working here.”

He also will represent EmBe in broader community conversations around solving the child care industry’s systemic challenges.

“From a workforce angle, we need to reeducate the community that these are good jobs, including how we talk about it with high school and college students,” Hanson said. “It is a viable career, but it’s crucial to work with business partners to make this service affordable for their employees and determine how we partner to fix this and redefine child care as a whole as infrastructure.”

“It’s not a luxury,” he points out. “It’s something we all need to keep our entire city going. I would be elated if people talked about child care in the same breath as having roads and electricity. It’s what keeps the rest of everything moving.”