We are a group of Georgetown Law students and alums who share a passion for public education reform.
Danny Johnson is a 1L at Georgetown. Prior to law school, he worked at the Hinckley Institute of Politics as a student outreach coordinator promoting civic involvement among high school and university students in Salt Lake City. He became interested in education policy and child advocacy while living for two and a half years in Sao Paulo and teaching English to underserved Brazilian youth. He has also worked with kids outside the classroom as a basketball coach at the XSI Factory and Matt Harpring Basketball Camps.
Marnie Kaplan is in her second year of pursuing joint degrees in law and public policy at Georgetown. Prior to returning to school, she taught middle school English in the Bronx as a Teach for America corp member and worked for the non-profit Out2Play. Marnie is dedicated to pursuing a career in education policy, and in her spare time volunteers with Everybody Wins and 826DC.
Jacqueline Smith graduated from Georgetown Law in May 2009. As a 3L she served as a mentor with the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund. As a 2L she taught at Ballou Senior HS as part of Georgetown’s Street Law Clinic. In September 2009 she began a Fellowship in University Innovation at Arizona State University where she is now the Director of Social Embeddedness.
Anne Witt is a 1L student at Georgetown coming straight from undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. During her time at Notre Dame, Anne volunteered with several education-based groups most notably No Parent Left Behind, an organization empowering parents to become more involved in their child’s education. She has also collaborated on several research initiatives that have included studies on the U.S. high school dropout rate as well as the legal implications of drug testing in schools. Anne is someday hoping to pursue a career in school law and/or education policy.
Veena Srinivasa is a 2L at Georgetown Law. She taught second grade in a charter school in Brooklyn, NY for two years. Prior to that, Veena did research for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in Providence, RI. She is spending the summer of 2009 interning at the Public Education Network.
Prof. William Taylor is in private practice, where he focuses both his practical skills and his teaching and writing on the field of civil rights and education. He founded the Center for National Policy Review and is vicechairman with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He served for six years on the Board of Testing and Assessment of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the Chair of the Citizen’s Commission on Civil Rights, and a member of the Board of Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Mr. Taylor’s memoirs, “The Passion of My Times: An Advocate’s Fifty-Year Journey in the Civil Rights Movement” was published by Carroll and Graf in 2004.
Prof. Heather Voke is the Director of the Program in Education, Inquiry, and Justice at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Scholar in The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, the Education Initiatives Fellow in The Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service, and an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Her research focuses on the normative and empirical relationships between education and democracy, learning environments and policies that promote student academic and civic engagement, and models or alternatives to the current practices of teaching and learning.
