Contact Us

Contact Us
The Collaborative's Early Childhood Programs are located at

123 Hawley Street
Northampton, MA 01060
Phone: 413-586-4998 or 800-519-1882
Fax: 413-586-1725
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Meet Our Staff
The Early Childhood staff at the Collaborative are a dedicated group of professionals in the field of early education and care. We bring a wealth of expertise and experience to our work with community families, schools, and programs to address issues faced by families and young children on a local, state, and national level.

Barbara Finlayson, Director, M.Ed. Early Childhood Education, has over forty years of experience working in the field of early education and care as a teacher in Head Start and public school and center-based programs, an Education Coordinator, and the director of centers serving infants, toddlers, preschool, and out-of-school time children. She has been the director of the Early Childhood Programs at the Collaborative for thirteen years.
Phone: 413-586-4998 ext. 101
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Sharon Gilmore is a certified Special Education teacher who has taught in public preschool and elementary school, and a therapeutic foster care parent. She has been the Community Organizer for the Western Massachusetts Leadership Network in Action (WLNA) for two years.

Corky Klimczak, MSW, has had over thirty years of experience providing parenting support and family education services to parents, caregivers, and children.

Claire Kurtz, M.Ed., Early Childhood Consultant, is a human services and education professional with thirty years of service in public health and educational settings. She provides consultation, support, and training to parents, child care providers, and teachers about social-emotional and behavioral issues of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Her approach is strengths-based and collaborative.

Kay Lisseck, MS, has over thirty-five years of experience in the field of early childhood. She has worked as a toddler and preschool teacher, director of a multi-site center, taught at the college level, and provided on-site training and coaching to support program quality improvements for over ten years at the Collaborative.

Nancy Ward Lolacono, M.Ed., has worked for over thirteen years as a teacher, supervisor, and consultant to educators in a variety of early education settings including public schools, private centers, family child care, and Head Start. Her work includes helping programs meet state and national quality standards, and presenting trainings for early educators and parents on a variety of topics.

Carolyn Mazel has been in and out of the early childhood world since she volunteered in a preschool classroom as a high school student. Now, in addition to her duties as administrative assistant in the Early Childhood department, Carolyn leads a weekly preschool story hour at the Hatfield Library and oversees the Coordinated Family and Community Engagement grant in Hatfield. In her "spare time" she teachers Music Together®, an early childhood music and movement program, in Northampton.
Phone: 413-586-4998 ext. 102
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Alison Morrisey, LCSW, has more than twenty years of experience working with young children and their families. Alison has been a teacher, has worked for early intervention, and is a social worker. At the Collaborative, she provides support to parents, teachers, and child care providers to help meet the social-emotional needs of young children.

Lin Notzelman has been the coordinator for the Ware Family Center and the Parent-Child Home Program since 2007. A mother to four creative children, she is most passionate about working with children and families around the promotion of early literacy.

Deborah Roth-Howe, LICSW, has over twenty years of experience working with young children, families, and school programs. For nine years she worked as an Early Intervention Specialist, serving children ages birth to three with or at risk for developmental delays. She has also worked with families of adopted children and toddlers and preschoolers struggling to master age-appropriate developmental skills. In addition to her work as a mental health specialist for the Early Childhood department of the Collaborative for Educational Services, Deborah is co-facilitator for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' pilot court program serving never-married parents who are in the midst of a court-related process that impacts their children.