About

If you’re looking for innovative ways to maintain a high level of business success and become even stronger in the future, IECS can be an outstanding resource for you. With our team of creative, forward-thinking consultants, we are advisers who study programs and businesses, analyze where they are today and how they can grow tomorrow. We observe business practices, policies, leadership skills, marketing and advertising, health and safety practices, and much more. We run the gamut from supporting start-ups to offering advice on creating a high-quality program and expanding. We provide professional development strategy, review finances and budgeting, and create a growth plan that meets each individual organization’s needs for long term succession.

Our Founder

A dedicated advocate for children, Damaris Alvarado-Rodriguez has been recognized as a leader in the field of childcare and in the world of business. In March 2022, she was recognized with the Al Dia Women of Merit Award in the Entrepreneurial Category, shortly after being the cover story in Al Dia newspaper where she was called “The Queen of Children’s Playhouse.” The title resounded with her because she humbly credits the game of chess for her ability to strategize and plan ahead in all walks of life. Also, in 2022, Damaris was thrilled to receive the Bronze Medal for Pennsylvania’s Equity in Early Childhood Education Champion award.

In addition to owning two childcare centers – Children’s Playhouse Early Learning Centers in South Philadelphia, Damaris launched Innovative Education Consulting Services in 2022, providing advisory support the start-up of new businesses and enhancement of existing businesses, especially serving the Latin community.

Damaris Alvarado-Rodriguez has been honored to serve in many capacities as an expert in the field – as a speaker, serving on several boards, advisory groups and on various panels talking to Senators and State Representatives. She spoke at the HDPC Hearing on People’s Budget Education on March 1, 2021, and her testimony was so touching, several people were moved to tears. Always involved in early childhood, Damaris has worked on several initiatives including SEPEEC Advocacy Committee, Pennsylvania Child Care Association Board Member (PACCA), PHLprek SPARK Provider Council, Children’s First Racial Equity Providers group, and SEPEEC’s Latinos Educando Junto Latin X Provider group. 

Adding to her credentials, Damaris has had much success with funders. On three different occasions Children’s Playhouse has been granted The Fund for Quality (FFQ), a partnership between Reinvestment Fund and Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), supported by funding from the William Penn Foundation, and Vanguard Strong Start for Kids Program. Through the provision of business planning support and facilities-related financing, Fund for Quality supports high-quality early care and education providers with expanding their services to reach more low-income families.

Being a business owner has come naturally to Damaris. Born and partially raised in Puerto Rico, her family moved to New York when she was a teen. At the young age of 22, she opened her first business, a restaurant in Brooklyn. By 28, she opened a collections and billing agency for insurance and physician companies. After she moved to Philadelphia in 2003, she was looking for new avenues, and opened her first family childcare center that same year. In 2005 she owned and operated a group center in a building she acquired and expanded capacity in the same building to provide more expansion slots to families on her wait list, in a STAR 4 Center.  Seven years later, in 2014, Damaris created a strategic expansion plan to expand her early childcare high-quality programs in areas where it was most needed and moved into 2501 S. Marshall Street with the Whitman Center.  In 2017 she added another center at 1426 W. Passyunk Avenue called Newbold.

With so much growth in her businesses, it was time to study further and in 2021, she graduated from the 10K Goldman Sacks Entrepreneurship Program. With her skills and history, Damaris Alvarado-Rodriguez is the ideal person to serve as an innovative educational consultant to others.

TESTIMONIALS

{

Since 2016, Damaris Alvardo-Rodriguez has been an advocate for implementing inclusion in early childhood education, where I serve as the Clinical Research Coordinator at Thomas Jefferson University’s Child & Families Research Studies Program. Damaris has established herself and her organization as advocates not only for inclusion policies in the early childhood field but also for every child and family to have access to high quality early childhood learning experience.

{
Dionne Wright-Chambers
Co-Founder/Principal Consultant
Learn, Empower, Grow Consultant Group
{

Damaris Alvarado-Rodriguez has been a consultant for the Racial Equity Early Childhood Provider Council at Children First. The entire time she worked with me, she was dependable and very reliable. Damaris has more than proven her ability to perform her job to the maximum.

{
Stephanie Blake, Ed.D., MBA
Stephanie Blake, Ed.D., MBA
Children First
{

Damaris Alvarado has consulted with us through expansion projects to increase slots in our organization as well as consulted with us through budgeting while thinking about our future business and personal growth. Through her consulting with our organization, Damaris has shown that she was knowledgeable, creative, innovative, dependable and reliable.

{
D. Shields, M.Ed.
Director
GLAd Center, Philadelphia, PA
{

Damaris Alvarado-Rodriquez has shared her extensive expertise, innovative ideas and customized resources to help plan the Southeast PA Day of Hire in October 2021 and the statewide Hiring Days in March 2022. As a result of her tireless efforts and ingenuity, Damaris has hired new staff for her own two Centers and has supported other programs in finding creative ways to recruit and retain new employees.

{
Jackie Groetsch
Public Policy Field Organizer
First Up