Allyx Schiavone
Allyx Schiavone is the driving force behind Friends Center for Children’s rapid growth and innovation. Under her leadership as Executive Director since 2009, Friends Center has grown to three locations across New Haven and serves as a national model for what is possible in transforming a national childcare system that is underfunded and overburdened. Allyx is a passionate advocate for access and equity in early care and education, committed to advancing educators’ compensation and well-being.
To address the childcare crisis, Allyx has developed several initiatives at Friends Center that serve as a model to the early care and education industry nationwide. Under her leadership, the organization has established programs to supplement teacher salaries and provide holistic support to staff, parents, and children. In 2014, Friends Center launched its Emotional Wellbeing Program which prioritizes the wellbeing of the adults caring for the community’s children. Under Allyx’s leadership, Friends Center established its Teacher Leadership Program, a paid professional learning opportunity for its educators, designed to disrupt systems of marginalization by creating space for educators to nurture their leadership abilities and prepare them to advance to the role of head teacher.
In the midst of the pandemic in 2020, Allyx launched Friends Center’s innovative Free Teacher Housing Initiative, a first-of-its-kind program that offers eligible teachers free housing as a salaried benefit to help them build financial security. The program has been featured by The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning and Univision. Allyx partnered with the Yale School of Architecture’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project to design and build family homes for the initiative.
As an expert in early childhood development and elementary education, Allyx is an experienced author of curricula for preschool, elementary and high school students with an emphasis on multidisciplinary studies. She has served as a teacher and administrator in Connecticut and New York schools.
A third-generation New Haven native, Allyx has 25 years of experience in mixed-use commercial and residential development and management. She is responsible for founding six successful businesses and four non-profit entities to date, including two summer programs for children in New York.
Allyx serves as co-chair of Child Care for Connecticut’s Future, a non-partisan coalition representing parents, providers, business leaders, advocates, and community leaders who want to transform how early care and education is funded in Connecticut. In that role, in 2020, she helped launch the now annual Morning Without Child Care across the state, which inspired an annual national Day Without Child Care.
She currently serves as a member of the National Ideal Learning Roundtable, a group of early childhood education experts who work collectively toward equitable expansion of ideal learning for underserved young children, families, and communities; the mayoral-appointed New Haven Early Childhood Council; and the External Stakeholders Steering Committee for the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood (OEC), to which she was appointed by OEC Commissioner Beth Bye. She is a recipient of the Bank Street College of Education Alumni Association Recognition Award, presented annually to Bank Street graduates honoring outstanding career accomplishments in the field of education that exemplify the spirit and philosophy of Bank Street College; the Southern Black Nurses Association Community Service Award; the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce’s Nonprofit Stars Align Award; the Amity Club Distinguished Italian-American Lifetime Achievement Award; Exchange Magazine’s Master Leader award; and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s Marvin Maurer Spotlight Award. Under Allyx’s leadership, Friends Center for Children was recognized with the 2024 Yale University Seton Elm-Ivy Award.
Allyx is a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and is a former board member of Connecticut Voices for Children; appointee to the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Reading; leader of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund Community Leadership Program; and co-founder of the Quinnipiac River Community Group. She holds dual Master’s degrees from Bank Street College of Education in Early Childhood Development and Elementary Education and a Bachelor’s degree from Union College.
Allyx is the mother of two amazing adult children and lives in New Haven with her partner and their dog, Tuck.