About ICP
The Institute for Childhood Preparedness empowers early childhood professionals with the tools, training, resources, and skills they need to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies and disasters.
Our mission
ICP was built around a simple idea: preparedness training for early childhood programs should be practical, age-aware, and delivered by people who understand both emergency response and the daily realities of caring for young children.
Our multidisciplinary team includes award-winning first responders and early childhood education specialists with decades of real-world experience. We translate that experience into calm, usable training for the people caring for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, families, and staff.
What informs the work
ICP's training draws from emergency response, public health, environmental health, law, education, security, curriculum development, and community engagement.
Founder and CEO
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Childhood Preparedness.
Andy has worked full time on emergency preparedness, response, and recovery issues impacting the early childhood sector since 2015, including child care, family child care, afterschool care, Head Start, and Early Head Start programs.
His background spans emergency response, public health, law, environmental health, and federal policy. He previously served in senior preparedness roles with Child Care Aware of America, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Andy began his career in the Illinois fire service in 1996, serving several departments as a firefighter, paramedic, and hazardous materials technician, and later as a full-time union firefighter.
In the early morning hours of July 2, 2001, his crew responded to a trailer fire at Royal Estates Mobile Home Park in Kankakee. Two children, ages three and six, were trapped inside. Andy tore away the exterior siding and wall with his bare hands to reach them, and pulled both children from the burning home. Both survived. The City of Kankakee later presented him with a Certificate of Appreciation recording that their lives “were saved from certain death,” and he was named Kankakee County Firefighter of the Year in 2002.
He does not tell that story to sound brave. He tells it because, that night, reaching two small children required going through a wall.
Children experience emergencies differently. They may not be able to recognize danger, follow complex instructions, open an exit, move quickly, or protect themselves in the ways emergency plans often assume. For years, Andy saw emergency preparedness largely through the eyes of the people responding to the crisis. That fire helped shape a different question: what does preparedness look like when we design it around the people least able to protect themselves?
That question would eventually become central to the Institute for Childhood Preparedness.
From 2006 to 2008 he served a two-year internship with the Illinois Department of Public Health in Springfield, drafting and revising administrative rules for state health programs. In 2008 he was awarded the David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship, one of two awarded nationwide that year, and went on to serve as a Health Policy Fellow for the US Senate Budget and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees. He holds a certificate in early childhood leadership from Harvard.
He is admitted to practice law in Illinois, the District of Columbia, and before the United States Supreme Court. He holds a bachelor's degree, a Master of Public Administration, and a Juris Doctor, all from Southern Illinois University, and teaches as an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University in community and environmental health.
Federal and national work
Much of what ICP teaches was developed with the agencies and organizations that set the standards for the field.
Andrew Roszak is credited by name as an advisor in six Sesame Workshop 2026 family emergency guides — covering emergency preparedness, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, house fires and blizzards. He also served as a preparedness advisor during development and production of the Sesame Street special Storm on Sesame Street.
Contributing author to the federal Head Start Emergency Preparedness Manual (2015 edition), produced by the Office of Head Start.
After the 2017 hurricanes, the Office of Head Start identified that no practical method existed to assess an early childhood facility after a disaster. ICP led the development, stakeholder validation, and pilot testing of the resulting assessment tool with ATSDR, the National Environmental Health Association, and jurisdictional partners.
More than fifty child development facilities assessed at installations worldwide, including Hawaii and Japan, under direct federal contract.
Since 2018, ICP has served as the operational arm for special projects for the Region II Head Start Association, covering New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Its New Jersey Head Start Association contract has been renewed annually for five years, and ICP provided several years of conference coordination and on-site support for the New York State Head Start Association.
In 2025 Andy Roszak founded Head Start East — and he funds it personally. A nonprofit providing professional development, technical assistance and national convening for the Head Start community. Not a sponsorship and not a marketing arm: an institution he built and pays for because the field needed one.
Accredited training
ICP is an IACET Accredited Provider, a recognition that reflects a commitment to high-quality continuing education and training processes. For organizations responsible for staff development, that matters.
Meet our team
ICP's instructors are working paramedics, firefighters, hazardous materials technicians, and law enforcement officers, several of them award-winning. The wider team adds public health, environmental health, medicine, criminology, operations, and early childhood experience.
Ronald brings more than 20 years of distinguished law enforcement service, including experience as a patrol officer, tactical unit supervisor, watch commander, detective, and community outreach officer, and was named Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. He has supported emergency preparedness work with Child Care Aware of America and has extensive experience in community education, investigations, fraud prevention, and private security.
B.J. is a retired United States Marine Corps Colonel with more than 30 years of leadership experience in military operations, organizational management, and strategic program development. His career includes combat service in Iraq and two deployments to Afghanistan, command of the School of Infantry–East, and service as Chief of Staff of the Second Marine Division. Following his military career, he led Marine and Family Programs at Camp Lejeune, directing a workforce of more than 1,000 employees providing childcare, behavioral health, family readiness, and deployment support services. He spearheaded the Marine Corps' first active shooter preparedness program for childcare facilities, later adopted service-wide. B.J. now brings that experience to ICP, helping childcare programs build a readiness posture that enhances safety and preparedness.
Brian brings more than 30 years in emergency services to ICP's facility assessment work. He has served as a Facility Safety Advisor and Safety Director for both public and private organizations, conducting facility and personnel safety assessments, developing corrective action plans, and delivering on-site safety instruction. A nationally registered paramedic who holds IFSAC Firefighter I and II certifications, he has served with fire departments in Indiana and deployed as a paramedic during national incidents in Louisiana and Texas. He conducts facility safety and security assessments for Head Start, Early Head Start and child care programs across the country.
David serves as an environmental health officer with two decades of experience protecting communities from illness and disease. His work includes inspecting food establishments, child care facilities, public pools, and other settings for compliance with public health rules and regulations.
Dr. Kagey has worked in public health for more than 40 years and in emergency preparedness and response for 15 years. Her work has focused on planning and preparing for and with vulnerable populations, including service with the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Zakary is a pediatrics resident at the University of Florida with experience across pediatric organizations serving patients from neonates to teenagers. His work with ICP is shaped by a commitment to advocacy for children and families affected by emergencies, disasters, and public health disruptions.
Dr. Samuel is a criminologist with expertise in police-community relations, risk management, community engagement, interpersonal violence, and early identification and intervention systems. Her background includes more than a decade with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC.
Demi has been part of ICP since 2018, supporting preparedness trainings, public health writing, and research. Her background in medicine and public health includes preparedness work with Head Start programs and local public health partners in Puerto Rico.
Work with ICP
