Yvette Sanchez Fuentes serves as the assistant director for policy with Ascend at the Aspen Institute. Fuentes brings extensive experience in providing services to young children from low-income families at the local, regional, and national level. Sanchez Fuentes has most recently served as the director of the Office of Head Start, a Presidential political appointee at the US Department of Health and Human Services. In her role as director, Sanchez Fuentes led the Administration's critically important mission of enriching the quality of early childhood development for our nation's most vulnerable children. Prior to her appointment, Sanchez Fuentes served as the executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association. She worked with early education services, policies and resources for migrant and seasonal farm worker children and their families. Early in her career, Sanchez Fuentes worked for the Education Development Center where she was the early childhood specialist for the International Systems Division and provided technical assistance to projects in Honduras, El Salvador, and Egypt and has managed services for a large migrant and seasonal program for staff development and family child care initiatives.