Dr. Kayla C. Elliott

I am a writer, womanist, wonderer, and wanderer. I am a speculative fiction writer, higher education and workforce policy expert, bookworm, girl’s girl, and third generation Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) graduate. All of these identities led me here.

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My career has been incubated by scholarships, internship programs, networking, and mentoring. I attended Fisk University on a full ride. As a business major, I participated in INROADS and interned at Lockheed Martin. When the company defunded for the independent research program I worked on, the INROADS staff encouraged me to network. I wrote a few articles in the company newsletter for the Communications department and they hired me for the next two summers. There, I learned about corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. I knew then I wanted to make an impact through funding and philanthropy. The summer after my junior year, the Community Relations manager encouraged me to apply for the masters program in the School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.

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My senior year, I sat on the university board of trustees as student body vice president and got to see some behind-the-scenes discussions while we were going through accreditation and being sued by the state. The media narratives and accreditor decisions based on Fisk’s financial insecurity were such a major disconnect from the support and rigor and legacy I felt on campus. I knew then I wanted to have a career making an impact on higher education funding and HBCUs. I applied for the SEO-Career program summer philanthropy cohort in New York City and a scholarship for the Masters in Philanthropy program at IUPUI and received both. SEO placed me at Teach For America. I was initially disappointed I wasn’t at a foundation, but soon realized I was at a fundraising behemoth where individual offices were raising more money than my whole university. I knew then I wanted to move funding to education organizations serving Black students.

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As part of my scholarship, I was given a paid graduate assistantship. During my first year, I worked on campus in fundraising and communications. Looking for summer employment, I reached out to the HR manager at TFA’s national office for an introduction to the Indianapolis team. That conversation led to a summer internship in fundraising and eventually a job offer before I graduated. During my second year, I did my graduate assistantship at Lumina Foundation, a multibillion dollar higher education philanthropy. There, I learned about the influence of philanthropy on policy and that most higher education funding comes from public sources. I knew then I wanted to impact public funding and higher education policy. Determined to gain fundraising and grant writing skills, I worked fulltime at TFA in Indianapolis for a few years then took a promotion in the Jacksonville office.

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When I realized my GRE scores were expiring, I applied for doctoral programs and received funding from Florida Atlantic University in 2015. My first semester, I met two staff of the Southern Education Foundation at a conference who encouraged me to apply for their Southern Educational Leadership Initiative program. I was hired as a summer doctoral intern at SEF and researched higher education funding policy for HBCUs which we published in a book and a blog. I knew then I wanted to reimagine higher education. My manager at SEF moved on to Education Trust in DC the next year and hired me in 2019. She trained me to take on her role when she moved to another organization in 2020.

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In my research roles, I publish academic and policy pieces like technical reports, briefs, journal articles, and op-eds. The current administration has kept the federal policy space in a near constant state of fear and defense with an onslaught of executive orders, rapid layoffs, and attacks on DEI. I’ve found a lot of solace reading fantasy and science fiction.  I know now that I not only want to reimagine this world, but imagine new ones. I was recently selected for the fiction cohort of Center for Black Literature’s Wild Seeds retreat. My first novel is a multigenerational story of HBCU magic, history, and futures.