About Us

Jacquelin Baker has been an educator for 20 years, with a passion for helping others to learn more about themselves and self-actualize. After teaching  in the classroom, she became a teacher educator and curriculum designer. Dr. Baker has coached hundreds of educators, increasing their leadership capacity and the educational outcomes of thousands of students across the country.  She paired her knowledge of how the brain learns with her expertise in race and identity theory, systems thinking, and culturally responsive leadership and pedagogy to expand her coaching to professionals in all fields.  

Prior to starting CLL, Jacque served as the co-chair and founding member of Teach for America's first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Council where she and her team created cultural competency development for the Chicago-Northwest Indiana region, advised the executive director, and consulted with staff to accelerate progress toward the organization's diversity, equity, and inclusiveness goals in recruitment, hiring, and programming.

Jacque has a B.A. in American Studies with Africana Studies and Latinx Studies minors.  She has a M.A. in Teaching and a doctorate in Education, specializing in culturally responsive curriculum and instruction and organizational systems and leadership.  

 Caitlin Miller is an educator with over 10 years of experience teaching and designing curriculum for a variety of ELA, social science, and cultural studies courses. She earned her master's degree in urban education from Indiana University where she mastered culturally relevant pedagogy, critical consciousness, and cultural competency. She piloted and designed curricula for a gifted & talented program that was based in cultural relevance and critical thinking skills. She also wrote ELA & social science interim assessments for NHA charter schools that were distributed to 80+ schools nationwide. She currently coaches and develops teachers in culturally responsive teaching strategies and designs and facilitates cultural competency workshops for professionals. She specializes in creating vertically aligned curricula that allow students to resist systems of oppression while building their cultural competency. She is also pursuing her doctorate in education, specializing in curriculum and instruction.  

Chanelle Bell is a dynamic and fierce educational advocate. Her exuberant personality enables her to make meaningful relationships across lines of difference which has earned her the nickname “the connector”. She is a 2014 Teach For America Greater Chicago- Northwest Indiana alumna and was profiled by the organization for her innovative classroom culture and high results in an article titled, "How a Theatre Major Found Her Role of a Lifetime in the Classroom." Her passion to end educational inequity began when at 20 she became the Assistant Editor of The Post News Group, the largest Black published newspaper in Northern California. Her articles highlighted Black Excellence and analyzed the education landscape in Oakland. 

Chanelle’s education journey led her to move from New York, where she completed a B.A. in Theatre at Fordham University to the South Side of Chicago. While completing her M.S. in Education at Dominican University, Chanelle was able to teach preschool in the same neighborhood that she attended preschool. Her work in civic engagement manifested when she was able to empower and provide resources for the parents of her students as the Manager of Government and Community Affairs at Noble Network of Charter Schools, the largest high school charter school network in the city of Chicago. Chanelle’s work in the South Side communities of Chicago has been featured in The Chicago Citizen, The Chicago Defender, The Chicago Tribune, and WBBN. 

In 2018 Chanelle was selected to join the inaugural Obama Foundation Community Leadership Cohort where she has launched an organization called Positively Melanin, which provides community workshops designed to equip Black youth with the necessary guidance to navigate their success and an online space that highlights Black excellence in various industries in efforts to empower and inform their career aspirations. Positively Melanin was featured in an  NPR segment titled, “In Chicago, The Obamas’ Civic Engagement Programs Are In Action”. Chanelle hosted the 2nd ever Obama Foundation Summit that was streamed worldwide to thousands of people. This past November, Chanelle spoke at the TEDxNaperville convening about how she uses her theatre training to reclaim her power everyday. She is also an alumna of the Surge Institute, which educates, empowers, and energizes educational leaders of color who will create transformative change in the communities that they serve. In addition to her work in the education field, Chanelle is a published writer and actress. She uses those mediums to produce art that highlights inequity and charges the audience to take action against injustices. 

Chanelle is the Senior Managing Director, Public & Community Affairs at Teach For America Greater Chicago-Northwest Indiana, where she works to build meaningful partnerships that will create a pipeline of resources and opportunities for the organization and the students that Teach For America serves.

Anna Li Bryant is an educator because it intersects all her passions: stories, students, and social justice. Previously, Anna was a teacher for over 7 years, both in Chicago and overseas. As a high school English teacher, she used her culturally-responsive curriculum to achieve proven results, attaining district, state and national-level benchmarks for the SAT essay for multiple years. In addition to teaching, she worked as an part-time administrator, where she was responsible for coaching teachers and developing writing curriculum implemented across departments. 

Anna is also experienced in organizing and facilitating justice-centered learning experiences. Through Stanford University, Anna was a Leading Fellow of the Hollyhock Program, and led professional development for teachers across the country and Stanford graduate students. Most recently, Anna works as a curriculum development specialist at SparkShop, where she coaches teachers, writes curriculum distributed to 20+ schools, and facilitates in-class STEM workshops for Chicago students. 

Anna has a BA in English Writing and an M.A. in Teaching. In her spare time, Anna is the co-founder of Protest Through Poetry, a grassroots organization for BIPOC poets. She loves to write and has been the recipient of the Lowell-Grabill award for her poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. 

Brittany Croone believes that everything a school does should be grounded in students', families', and communities' visions for their long-term success. Her educational leadership is grounded in a belief in the abilities and growth of all students and a belief in every teacher's ability to be a culturally responsive systems-change leader. 

Brittany has served as both a general and special educator and has coached and developed hundreds of teachers across all contents and grade levels, as well as instructional coaches and school leaders through a data-driven lens to lead their classrooms and schools in culturally responsive and equitable ways that prepare all of our students to have access to and take advantage of the opportunities to lead a meaningful life of their choosing (not society's).

Brittany also runs a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting practice, BCIVL Consulting, and most recently started designing diversity, equity, and inclusion learning strategy for Google.

Kelli Hobson believes in empowering others through liberation by way of self-care and reflection and using community engagement and organizing to liberate neighborhoods in Chicago and beyond.

​Kelli designs and facilitate intentional, culturally responsive programming for adults in and outside the classroom to guide educators towards more equitable teaching and learning practices. She specializes in creating multi-tiered implementation strategies through workshops, video conferencing, tangible artifacts, personalized development plans, and group or individual in-person coaching.