Louise Kennelly

As executive director of the DC Collaborative, Louise Kennelly works with the staff, members, and board to ensure the organization's consistent achievement of its mission to provide access to world-class arts and humanities for DC public school students. Before coming to the DC Collaborative, she was a director at the National High School Center located at the American Institutes for Research. Before joining AIR, Kennelly led external relations initiatives at New American Schools (NAS), providing public relations and policy-related services to clients such as the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Kennelly has taught at the secondary school and college levels and has covered education issues as a daily news journalist and editor. She graduated from Yale University and holds a master's from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and an M.F.A from the University of North Carolina. She is also a published poet and painter showing at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery. She is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, a North Carolina State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and is an artist in the schools through the Maryland State Arts Council's Arts in Education (AiE) program.