Caroline James

Caroline James started her social justice career as a student activist at The University of Alabama where she worked to create the city’s first diversity day celebration. After leaving college, she taught kids in New Orleans. In 2014, Caroline won Teach for America’s National Sue Lehmann Excellence in Teaching Award. Having moved back to Chicago, she went on to manage the development of teachers through coaching, professional development, and diversity work. Since then, she’s worked as an Assistant Principal, an advisor for the creation of an LGBTQIA school in Chicago and taught GED English classes.

In 2017, she was named a Bill Gates Cambridge Scholar and went on to complete a Master’s in Philosophy of Education at the University of Cambridge. Her graduate research (and lifelong passions) are to explore diversity and inequity through an education lens. Caroline was also awarded two international education fellowships; most dearest to her heart is Humanity in Action, where she explored equity issues in Poland and France.

Caroline is a 2021 – 2022 Racial Equity Grant recipient. The Racial Equity Grant, launched in Summer of 2020, is a 10-month grant which provides support to Humanity in Action Fellows and Senior Fellows as they defend racial equity and the #BlackLivesMatter movement through their projects. Generously funded by William H. Donner, it provides for dynamic civic action, critical social change and transformative promise as it relates to reckoning of past and present racial injustices. For more information on the grantees click here.

Updated February 2022