EducationCounsel LLC, www.educationcounsel.com, is a national leader on issues of education policy, strategy and law, with deep higher education experience on issues centered on equity and quality interests that include student and faculty diversity and inclusion, and free expression. Its team led by Jamie Lewis Keith, Partner, and Art Coleman, Managing Partner (supported by others, as needed) is partnering with AAAS, contributing thought leadership and other support on issues of policy, strategy, and law and other advisory services to the AAAS SEA Change project. EducationCounsel is an affiliate of the law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough LLP.
Jamie Lewis Keith
Jamie Lewis Keith is a Partner at EducationCounsel and has significant experience as a policy and legal leader in higher education. She has served in diversity and equity leadership roles on AAAS initiatives, including the Capacity Center and the Diversity and the Law project, and contributed to other national work focusing on research policy and equity, diversity, quality and openness of higher education and research. Most recently, she was Vice President, General Counsel and University Secretary at University of Florida and Senior Counsel at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Art Coleman
Art Coleman is a managing partner and co-founder of EducationCounsel LLC, with significant experience on issues of diversity, inclusion, and expression. Mr. Coleman, who previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, helps lead the work of the College Board's Access and Diversity Collaborative, and was a principal author of amicus briefs filed by national organizations in the two U.S. Supreme Court appeals in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the Board of Directors of GLSEN and the Lab School of Washington.
Advance HE’s equality charter frameworks are used across the globe to support and transform gender and race equality within higher education (HE) and research. Advance HE’s international charters aim to establish frameworks that are globally comparable and locally contextualized. The Athena Swan charter, which began in the UK in 2005, was assessed as the only gender equality award scheme that is both successful and transferable by GENDER-NET, a largescale research project funded by the European Commission. The first expansion outside of the UK took place in 2015, when Athena Swan launched in Ireland (Athena Swan Ireland). The framework has since been adapted for use outside of Europe, with charter frameworks established in Australia (SAGE-Athena Swan), the USA (SEA Change) and Canada (DIMENSIONS). SEA Change remains in collaboration with Advance HE via Sarah Dickinson Hyams, the Assistant Director of International Charters.
Sarah Dickinson Hyams
As Head of International Charters, Sarah Dickinson Hyams leads the strategic and operational development of international adoption of the Equality Charters Process. This process underlies the Athena SWAN Charter and the Race Equality Charter at the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU - part of Advance HE) in the United Kingdom. Prior to joining ECU, Dickinson Hyams worked at the University of Cambridge where she managed the Women in Science Engineering and Technology Initiative (WiSETI), a positive action gender equality project aiming to improve the recruitment, retention and promotion of women in STEMM. She previously worked at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) as the Science Policy and Diversity Specialist, and served on the Inaugural Advisory Council for SEA Change. She has an MSc in Gender, Sexuality and Society from Birkbeck University and a BA (hons) in Social Science from the University of Brighton.