Abby McCartney is a Senior Director at Afton Partners specializing in early childhood systems change across local, state, federal, and nonprofit policy development roles. Abby’s expertise includes fiscal analysis of state early childhood systems, cost modeling, research and advising on policy issues, and strategic planning support to build stronger communities for young children and their families. She has served in federal and local government, as a nonprofit leader, and as a classroom teacher. From 2019 to 2022, she advised Senator Elizabeth Warren on education issues, leading the Senator’s work on child care and student loan debt. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked on the CARES and American Rescue Plan Acts, including a successful campaign to secure $50 billion in relief funding for child care providers, and helped to launch an oversight campaign on health equity that resulted in the Trump Administration publishing new data about the impact of the pandemic on communities of color.
Abby was the executive director of Camden Enrollment, a non-profit overseeing the school enrollment system in Camden, New Jersey. In that role, she worked with district and school leaders and community stakeholders to build a family-friendly single application for pre-K-through-12 schools across all school sectors. She started her career teaching mathematics at Grace King High School in Metairie, Louisiana as a Teach for America corps member. Abby holds a master’s in public affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a bachelor’s in political science from Yale University, where she was a Truman Scholar.