We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Adrinda Kelly. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Adrinda below.

Adrinda, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

We must confront an urgent reality: in New Orleans, fewer than a third of our Black children are reading at grade level – a fundamental indicator of literacy skills. We know that literacy is foundational to a thriving life. Yet within this challenge lies an underutilized solution: the Black educators in our community.

This issue has deep historical roots. African-Americans were the only people in our nation legally forbidden to learn to read. In response, Black institutions and educators became vital forces for change. Black schools, at their best, have served as centers of refuge, alternative education, and political advocacy – creating networks that address the needs of a civically marginalized community.

Today, we face two critical challenges: the persistent disparity in resources for Black-led, Black-governed schools, and the concerning attrition rate among Black educators, particularly Black women.

Living as a minoritized person in an atmosphere of chronic racial stress inflicts a specific kind of damage – it steals your imagination. Through our work at BE NOLA, we aim to restore that capacity to dream, opening spaces of radical possibility for our children, our communities, and ourselves.

We urgently need to reimagine both how we conduct education and what constitutes quality education for New Orleans’ Black children. The free market paradigm that has infiltrated our public institutions, including schools, has no place in education if we truly believe every child deserves quality learning. This isn’t about competition or creating winners and losers – it’s about ensuring excellence in every school.

Our concrete goals include:
– Universal literacy for all children in our city
– Adequate resources for Black children, their schools, and their teachers – as Gloria Ladson Billings noted at one of our events, “I’d rather have a strong Plessy than a weak Brown”
– Reparations for the harms Black educators experienced in rebuilding our schools post-Katrina
– Ensuring Black educators in our city are effective, supported, well-paid, and connected to both each other and their community

Our ultimate vision extends beyond education: we want New Orleans’ Black children to become the entrepreneurs and architects of a city where people earn more than a living wage, work and live with dignity, have access to fresh food, clean air, and water, and can make personal choices about how they love, worship, and care for their bodies without government intervention. While this vision of a city – and ultimately a world – that works for everyone is larger than any single organization, we are committed to doing our part.

Adrinda, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ll help edit this response to improve its flow, grammar, and clarity while preserving its powerful personal narrative. Here’s the edited version:

My worldview has been profoundly shaped by New Orleans’ Black educators. Let me share a pivotal story from my childhood.

When I was 12, I was paired with a boy I had a crush on for a clay sculpting project at one of the city’s most racially diverse public schools. Our white teacher, annoyed by our giggling and excitement over touching each other’s hands, said: “you people should have never been allowed in this school.” Having no tools to address this racial microaggression, I responded the only way I knew how – I called her a bitch. After being sent to the principal’s office, I decided to transfer to McDonogh 35, an all-Black blue-ribbon high school.

What McDonogh 35 gave me goes beyond the standard educational terminology of “culture of high expectations,” “culturally relevant pedagogy,” and “social justice education.” I call it “spirit capital” – the profound understanding that being Black is not a risk factor, the inspiration of role models who looked like me and expected me to surpass their achievements, and the clear message that our ultimate goal wasn’t just securing a college degree and comfortable middle-class life, but obtaining tools to return and uplift our community.

This experience qualifies me, more than anything else, to serve as Executive Director of BE NOLA. I am living proof of what Black children can achieve when Black educators are supported to do their best work.

However, my K-12 experience exemplifies what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the danger of a single story.” While my classmates and I received an excellent education at #35, students at nearby schools like Fortier, Douglass, and John Mac did not. Rather than simply comparing pre- and post-Katrina education, we should ask why, over 140 years of public schools in New Orleans, we haven’t provided all children the education they deserve.

After graduating, I attended Harvard University – notably, as the only Black student matriculating from Louisiana that year. This experience was rich, challenging, and eye-opening, making me deeply grateful for the “spirit capital” my Black teachers had instilled in me. It sustained me through moments of self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Following my passion for inclusive narratives, I pursued a publishing career in New York, working as a book and digital content editor for Time Warner, McGraw-Hill, and Princeton Review, focusing on serving diverse student populations.

Hurricane Katrina marked a turning point, revealing patterns of neglect that I now see repeated in responses to COVID-19, Hurricane Ida, and beyond. Understanding and addressing these patterns of systemic neglect has become my life’s work.

Throughout my education sector career, I’ve consistently pioneered initiatives that amplify marginalized voices. I joined BE NOLA to work in education in my hometown and to reshape the post-Katrina narrative around Black education. Our challenge is to shift both the narrative and material conditions that suggest “Black teachers are failing Black children,” forcing us to confront the systemic white supremacy at our challenges’ root.

My leadership style is influenced by my great-great aunt, Julia Marguerite Mills Shade, a renowned Louisiana midwife who safely delivered hundreds of children. Like her, I see myself as a metaphorical midwife, helping birth visions into reality. My leadership principles include:
– Empowering others to lead from their expertise, recognizing that power and wisdom are shared
– Prioritizing people and community needs while maintaining urgency about impact
– Building trust-filled relationships and loving mutuality
– Remaining responsive to emergent change rather than prescriptive, valuing process as much as outcome

At BE NOLA, this midwifery-style leadership has helped bridge divides in our post-Katrina polarized education landscape. While I hold strong convictions about issues facing Black educators, schools, and students, I can connect with those holding different beliefs and experiences. This aligns with our core belief of “communion > unity,” suggesting that our connection comes through communication rather than forced alignment. I embrace building a shared vision with a diverse coalition, prioritizing joyful, healing-focused experiences through sharing stories, deep listening, and nurturing our common ground.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

In 2005, I watched as national paralysis devastated my hometown of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Having been away from home for seven years, I was unprepared for the overwhelming anger and pain I felt watching my fellow New Orleanians scream, weep, loot, laugh, and question how this could happen in their United States of America.

The most profound lesson came from my anger – I felt I should have seen it coming. I should have recognized that the same force that allowed my all-black, blue-ribbon public high school to be named after one of Louisiana’s largest slave-holders was the same force that shaped Katrina’s aftermath and the disproportionate harms it produced . Though I lacked the vocabulary to describe it then, I knew this force was rooted in historical erasures and silencings, and I witnessed firsthand the material harms these could produce.

This personal catastrophe forced me to question a world that no longer made sense. Through my subsequent research and study of historical slave rebellions, I’ve attempted to make sense of slavery’s legacy in my own life and country. The key lesson I’ve learned is to stop reflexively using race and nation to organize my anxieties. Instead, I’ve learned to embrace the complexity of our interconnected histories and to focus on finding communities of shared imagination.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I’ve never been particularly good at intentionally building my network. I’m more of an open book – curious george type. I can learn from anyone and I do all the time. If I had to name one particular strategy it would be supporting others whenever and however I can. I’d rather say yes – and my “yes” is not predicated on what’s in it for me. That willingness to give comes back to me tenfold in care, support, people speaking well of me in rooms that I am not in.

The other thing is, I’m a learner. I truly do love to learn. And part of that means showing up imperfect and being willing to fail, try again, and do better. I have a teachable spirit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Blackedunola.org
• Instagram: @blackednola
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackednola/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/be-nola-black-education-for-new-orleans
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@benolainc.6701

Image Credits

Ashley Lorraine Photography
@sheshoots_