Tennessee Staff

A native of Fowlerville, Michigan Sara Kaye was a longtime resident of Detroit, where she earned her BFA in Interdisciplinary Electronic Arts and MA in Media Arts and Studies from Wayne State University.

Taylor has been a longtime volunteer and team leader for Stand for Children in Nashville. She helped campaign against the English Only Amendment and was an integral part of Stand for Children’s successful work with the Race to the Top campaign. Taylor has her Masters of Arts in Teaching, K-6 and has taught both preschool and third grade. In 2010, she participated in a teacher exchange program where she observed math and science programs at public schools in Hadera, Israel. Though born and raised in Michigan, Taylor has been a Nashville citizen since 2001. On her down time, she enjoys running, participating in local half and whole marathons, and spending time with her wonderful husband, Reed and his twin daughters, Reace and Reilly. Taylor and Reed are expecting their first baby boy together, to be named Sawyer, in April 2012.

Jaclyn is a native of Houston, Texas. She graduated cum laude in 2007 from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas where she double majored in Theatre and Feminist Studies and minored in Spanish. Upon graduation, she pursued a path of social justice and was accepted to Teach for America in Memphis where she taught 9th grade English and Theatre at Craigmont High School. In the two years that she taught, her students closed the achievement gap by 50 percent and scored some of the highest advanced and proficient rates in recent history, with a proficiency rate of 98% and an advanced rate of 46% with her final class of students. As a theatre teacher, Jaclyn used Theatre for Social Justice models to guide her students both years in the creation of two performances that were self-written, produced, and performed. These performances were based on their personal life experiences and were done in order to raise empathy among their peers and create coping mechanisms for the challenges they face. This experience was perhaps the most influential in inspiring Jaclyn to continue the fight for public education reform and her students are what drive her work daily. When she is not organizing, she is active in the theatre community in Memphis and can be seen acting and singing in theatres across the city.

Kate was born and raised in West Virginia, but has called Nashville home since 2000. She and her husband Brian, a massage therapist, moved to Nashville to raise their children, Cora and Oliver, near their extended family. She worked as an assistant guide in an early childhood classroom at her daughter’s Montessori school, and most recently served as a community organizer with Change That Works, a national grassroots organization dedicated to the passage of a broad progressive agenda. Before that, she worked as a StoryCorps facilitator at the Nashville StoryBooth.