Dr. Marian Wright-Edelman said, “Service is the rent we pay for being.” Courtney has “paid her rent” through two decades of work in the nonprofit and government sectors – always with a clear focus on eliminating institutional barriers that continue to exclude people from the circle of human concern. She started her career in education as a paraprofessional in a segregated school for students with disabilities, which literally paid for – and informed the focus of – her legal training. Since then, she has conducted legal investigations under federal and state civil rights laws for the State of Wisconsin; managed equity-focused systems-change state initiatives in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa and Wisconsin; and served on the management team of for the state education agency in Wisconsin. She has served on the senior management team of a national civil rights organization and is an elected school board member in Cambridge, Wisconsin. Courtney focuses on justice in education in honor of her mother, who grew up white in the segregated south, and her daughters, to whom she wants to leave a fairer world.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Governing with a Racial Equity lens, Educational Equity, Policy and Advocacy, Application of equity tools to policies, programs, practices & partnerships