The resident will support Nesta in understanding the opportunities in Wales for our fairer start mission, specifically exploring the following five areas of focus:

• Supporting parents in their parenting.
• Providing access to high-quality early childhood education and care.
• Providing families with a solid financial bedrock.
• Integrating family support within communities.
• Garnering more funding in service of reducing early childhood inequalities.

We’re pleased to announce that Dr Gwenllian Lansdown Davies joins Nesta Cymru this autumn, to help deepen our understanding of early-years policy and practice in Wales.

Gwenllian is CEO of Mudiad Meithrin, the registered charity and membership organisation for the Welsh-medium early-years care and education sector. She leads the organisation in delivering support, policy advice and training for 1,000 Welsh-medium settings and groups. In her role, Gwenllian has grown the organisation and diversified the member offer including securing funding to establish ‘Set up and Succeed’ - a political response to the Welsh Government's Cymraeg 2050 goal. She also collaborated with the National Centre for Learning Welsh to set up Clwb Cwtsh to support parents to start learning Welsh. Gwenllian is on the Board of Medr: the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research and the National Lottery Fund in Wales and volunteers at her local Cylch Meithrin on the committee as the Responsible Individual.

Gwenllian says: “I’m bringing my expertise from the early-years sector to support the fairer start mission in Wales. I’ll be working with the mission team to create a resource to support specific and actionable recommendations for Nesta to deliver this mission in the Welsh setting. I will be speaking to stakeholders from across the early years sector to bring in new perspectives. If you want to connect with us or talk about ideas linked to our fairer start work in Wales, get in touch by emailing [email protected].”

“I’ve always admired Nesta’s work - the organisation is known for pushing boundaries and coming up with original ideas - so I’m excited to join the team and maximise knowledge transfer. I’m really keen to make a positive contribution to Nesta and bring back learnings to my organisation.”