Dr. Karla D. Kennedy is a Florida native who has been involved in student speech and publications since her days in junior high school. Kennedy, a strong advocate for the freedoms and rights of students and student journalists, has advised various high school media for 19 years in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. She served as the first Scholastic Journalism Outreach Coordinator for the University of Oregon at the George S. Turnbull Center located in downtown Portland, as well as the Executive Director of the Northwest Scholastic Press Association from 2012 to 2015. While at UO, she was honored with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Award in Equity and Inclusion. In 2007, the Florida Scholastic Press Association recognized Kennedy as the Morty Schaap Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She has taught Writing for Mass Communications, Writing Strategies, Multimedia Production, Media Law and Ethics, and Public Speaking. She wrote the curriculum and taught the Summer Journalism Institute at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami as well as advised the museum’s student publication, the MOCA’Zine.