Barbara Cervone is co-founder and president of What Kids Can Do, Inc. (WKCD). Previously, she coordinated Walter H. Annenberg’s $500 million “Challenge” to reform the nation’s schools—at the time the largest private initiative to reform public education in U.S. history—from its inception in January 1994 until June 2000. As national coordinator she directed the research, communications, and sharing and learning among the Challenge’s 18 projects. 

Prior to her work with Annenberg, Dr. Cervone served as associate director of the Rhode Island Foundation, one of the country’s ten largest community foundations. She has been a consultant in program evaluation and a principal investigator for several national education research projects. She also has written extensively about school reform.  Early in her career, she worked in the alternative school movement, first as a researcher and later as the coordinator of a network of 30 alternative high schools in 10 states.  She has a B.A. from Radcliffe College, and an M.A.T. and Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Cervone has contributed dozens of articles and book chapters about her work with youth and school reform and edited three photo essay books with youth as co-authors. She has been a presenter and speaker at more than fifty professional gatherings, from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to the National Service-Learning annual conferences.

In December 2008, Dr. Cervone received the “Purpose Prize” from Civic Ventures. She lives in Barrington, Rhode Island.

Kathleen Cushman, co-founder of WKCD, is a writer who has specialized in education and school reform for almost two decades. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Education Letter, Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, and many other national magazines. Cushman has been writer and editor of two school reform journals, Horace and Challenge Journal. She is the author or co-author of ten books, including First in the Family (Next Generation Press, 2005, 2006), Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students (New Press, 2003), Schooling for the Real World with Adria Steinberg and Rob Riordan (Jossey-Bass, 2000) and The Real Boys Workbook, with William S. Pollack (Random House, 2001). She lives in New York City.

Jay Douglas (webmaster) is a freelance web designer/webmaster living in New York City.

Joanna Klonsky, who graduated in December 2006 from Bard College, has worked part-time with WKCD as a writer and administrative assistant. She has been a writer and editor with the Council on Foreign Relations and currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Montana Miller, an ethnographer and folklorist, specializes in youth culture in her position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Trained as a flying trapeze artist and professional high diver, Dr. Miller has a B.A. from Harvard University and a doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles. A lifelong news junkie, she provides the WKCD website with its “Kids on the Wire” items. She lives in Perrysburg, Ohio.

Abe Louise Young is a poet, journalist, and educator who specializes in teaching writing for social change. In 1997, she helped to start the Poetry Center at Smith College, which connects the work of the classroom with the world of living poets. After teaching English at Loyola University in Chicago and in several high schools, she discovered that facilitating creative writing projects with youth and people in challenged communities is her path. Since then, she has created writing circles in prisons, hospitals, homes, schools, and youth and community centers nationwide. Abe Louise Young lives in Austin, Texas.

Y-Press is a youth-led news bureau headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since the 2008 Presidential Election Campaign, WKCD has subcontracted with youth journalists at Y-Press to provide monthly articles and reports on pressing political and social issues, from a youth perspective.

also

AAA Foray (Sandy Delany), graphic design, Rehoboth, Massachusetts
Justin Samaha, audio consultant, New York, NY