Welcome to Illuminate,
AECPCN’s Early Childhood Conference! 

Welcome to our Illuminate Early Childhood conference, where fantabulous speakers await to ignite your passion for early childhood education! Our lineup is not just impressive but truly extraordinary, featuring a diverse array of voices, knowledge and experiences. These insightful leaders are excited to share their insights, engage with you, and learn from your perspectives. Prepare yourself for a journey of inspiration, connection, and emotion as we come together to Illuminate Early Childhood!

Keynote Speakers

Sherry Duncan

Sherry Duncan, Early Childhood Indigenous Navigator – leadership and professional development focused on best practices with children, families and holding space for those who embrace them (providers, educators, teachers, parents, agencies, other professionals).

Sherry is a beloved speaker, storyteller and educational teacher. She brings a wealth of experience on her 36 years of dedicated work. Sherry has sat at the table with innovative thinkers, surrounded herself with creative artists and uses current research to inform her practice. Building relationships, using trauma-informed practices and “reconcilli-action” are at the core of her many lived experiences with children, families and adult learners. Through stories and conversations, her presentations will have you laughing, sharing, and thinking deeply about the important work we do.

Michelle Cederberg

Michelle Cederberg, CSP, HoF, MKin, Health and Productivity Expert, Coach, Author, Hall of Fame Speaker.

For over 20 years, Health and Productivity Expert Michelle Cederberg has captivated audiences across North America with her empowering and humorous messages that educate busy, driven professionals about how to set chase worthy goals, revive energy, and ignite high performance.

As an in-demand author, coach, and consultant, she believes that success is directly influenced by how well we harness the physical, mental and emotional capacity we each have within us. She enthusiastically calls on science to help people boost that capacity, so they can work and lead with confidence, and create the life and career they want.

★ EDUCATION & FOCUS: Michelle holds a Masters in Kinesiology, a BA in Psychology, a specialization in Health & Exercise Psychology, is a Certified Speaking Professional, Certified Exercise Physiologist and a High-Performance Coach. In 2023 she was inducted into the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame. She truly combines mind, body and practicality to inspire change.

★ BEST SELLING AUTHOR & INFLUENCER:
Michelle is the author of four books. Her latest publication “The Success-Energy Equation” debuted as a bestseller in October 2020 — helping to revolutionize the idea that burnout and stress don’t have to be part of success.

Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen, M.A., has proudly been an early childhood professional for almost forty years.

For the last twenty five years, Richard has traveled the world as a consultant, coach and motivational speaker/instructor, facilitating fun, innovative, thought-provoking, interactive, inspiring adult learning experiences for communities of early childhood teachers, administrators, caregivers and parents. He has delivered the keynote address and sessions at over 400 international, national, regional, state and local early childhood conferences around the globe, laughing, learning, crying, singing and dancing along with his audiences.

Additionally, he curates his viral social media presence, “Zen and the Art of Early Childhood Education” on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram which reaches 1,000,000+ readers, offers a catalogue of online ECE teacher professional development courses and hosts Community Sing-a-Longs.

He is currently hard at work writing his first book chronicling the inspirational ideas, insights and perspectives he has collected from the thousands of early childhood professionals with whom he has worked and played around the world.