Kelly Amis is the founder and president of Loudspeaker Films, a new independent film production company focused on social justice and education equity issues. Its first project, TEACHED, exposes disparities in the American public education system, especially as they impact urban minority youth.After graduating magna cum laude from Georgetown University, Amis taught fourth and fifth grades in South Central, Los Angeles as a charter corps member of Teach for America. This experience inspired Amis to earn a master's degree in Education Policy Analysis from Stanford University and to research local school governance as a Fulbright Scholar at the Australian Council for Educational Research in Melbourne. Since then, Amis has worked as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein—handling education, labor and foreign policy issues—and for a variety of education reform organizations, including: the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, where she launched one of the nation’s first charter school incubators; the Sallie Mae Fund, where she helped design and start-up Building Hope, a charter school facilities fund; and Fight For Children, where she devised the "three sector strategy" that helped increase educational options for low-income District of Columbia students. Amis is the co-author of “Making it Count: A Guide to High-Impact Education Philanthropy,” and numerous articles on education reform. She lives in Northern California. Email: [email protected]
by Kelly Amis Michelle Alexander’s New York Times op-ed “In Prison Reform, Money Trumps Civil Rights” is a powerful and depressing assessment of why more Americans are suddenly waking up to our nation’s status as the world’s most prolific jailor (while the U.S. represents just 5% of the world’s population, we account for 25% of…
by Kelly Amis Twelve years ago, during the last days of a Washington, D.C. summer, I met a tiny boy who left a big impression. I was volunteering at a day-in-the-country event for low-income D.C. kids; Malik was one of many who had climbed on a bus that morning to spend a day chasing ducks,…
by Kelly Amis Early in Davis Guggenheim’s education documentary “Waiting for Superman,” star Geoffrey Canada explains the title’s origin: as a child, Canada was devastated to learn that Superman didn’t exist, because who else would come save his troubled South Bronx neighborhood? Today, Canada embodies a real-life version of the superhero he longed for, at…