Sherrie Rollins Westin

Sherrie Westin is CEO of Sesame Workshop, the global impact nonprofit behind Sesame Street. Westin directs the Workshop’s efforts to provide impactful early learning through a broad variety of media as well as targeted social impact and research initiatives that address a wide range of critical issues facing children and families around the world. She also serves as Sesame Workshop’s chief mission ambassador, raising awareness, developing strategic partnerships, and cultivating philanthropic support to further the Workshop’s mission to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.  

Westin spearheaded a partnership with the International Rescue Committee to bring critical early education to children in the Middle East, which was awarded the MacArthur Foundation’s first ever $100 million grant, creating the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response. This work has expanded to reach children affected by crisis in Bangladesh, East Africa, Latin America, and those who have been forcibly displaced from Afghanistan and Ukraine. 

Westin has held leadership positions in media, nonprofit, and public service. She served as Assistant to the President for Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs for President George H.W. Bush, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and held senior positions at the ABC Television Network and U.S. News & World Report. Since joining the Workshop in 1998, Westin has led key organizational efforts spanning programming, licensing, research, education, and brand strategy, harnessing the power of media to reach children at scale. 

Named a “Leading Global Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine, one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and to Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list, Westin was also recognized with the Smithsonian’s “American Ingenuity Award” and the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Citizen Leadership. A staunch advocate for addressing children’s needs, she regularly appears on major media outlets to highlight the value of investing in early childhood development, especially for the most vulnerable children. 

Westin serves on the Sesame Workshop Board of Trustees and chairs the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, an independent research and innovation lab named for Sesame Street’s founder. She also serves on the boards of directors of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and Vital Voices Global Partnership and is a member of the Executive Leadership Council of the Early Childhood Development Action Network. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Afghan Women’s Council. 

Westin is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Concordia College in New York.