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Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg

Newhouse Director of CIRCLE

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg

Newhouse Director of CIRCLE
Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg headshot
Role

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg is the Newhouse Director of CIRCLE. She has led CIRCLE for the past decade, leading CIRCLE’s growth in impact by building a passionate and diverse team of staff who interact with civic life from both multi-disciplinary and intersectional lenses.  Kei’s scholarship seeks to expand pathways to civic learning and engagement through partnership-based and field-building research initiatives as well as applied research-to-practice projects, such as CIRCLE’s partnership with the Illinois Civics Hub, and Educating for American Democracy, and Youth Leadership Learning Community.  Kei’s approach to research design and orientation for partner-led impact is highly influenced by her academic background in Clinical and Community Psychology and Social-Emotional Learning. 

Before joining CIRCLE, Kei worked with young people and families at a public high school, an emergency room, and a community health center as a clinical psychologist in training. Working with people who faced numerous structural challenges and struggled with mental, academic, and legal hurdles as a result made her want to explore work that sought to correct systems that created those challenges in the first place, which attracted her to CIRCLE.

As a leading voice in the youth civic engagement field, Kei is frequently featured in major outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, C-SPAN, Channel 1, and NBC. Kei is a recipient of the Jobs for The Future Distinguished Fellowship for Student-Centered Learning (2016-2018),  and serves as a board director at March For Our Lives and Rhizome, both of which are youth-founded and led civic organizations. She previously served on the board of Generation Citizen and Democracy Works.  Most recently, she played a major role in development of the Our Common Purpose, a commission-report from the AAA&S, and the Educating for American Democracy initiative.  She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Loyola University, with an emphasis on positive youth development and community psychology. Learn more

Education
Ph.D. — Clinical Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, 2008
M.A. — Clinical Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, 2004
B.A. — Psychology, Knox College, 2001
Professional Experience
Present
Board Director, Rhizome
2022-Present
Board Director, March For Our Lives
2016-2022
National Board, Democracy Works
2016-2022
National Board, Generation Citizen
2013-2015:
Deputy Director, CIRCLE
2008-2013:
Lead Researcher, CIRCLE
2007-2008:
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, Knox College
Service Memberships
National Board | Generation Citizen
National Board | Democracy Works
Steering Committee | Educating for American Democracy
Steering Committee | Equity in Civics, Generation Citizen
Advisory Committee | Our Common Purpose, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Advisory Group | Project Information Literacy
Advisory Group | Citizen Z Project, Education Week
Advisory Council | Women in Civics, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute