Jennifer Kotting, PhD

Communications Strategist & Consultant Partnership for the Future of Learning

Jenni Kotting is a Communications strategist who has devoted her career to supporting narrative shift and grassroots organizing for political and cultural change. She brings more than a decade of experience in collaboratively producing strategic messaging, branding, storytelling, and innovative media through a strong racial justice lens. Jenni has often been behind the scenes in crafting compassionate and open source Communications strategies for reproductive, racial, youth, education, and birth justice movements. Her clients have included state agencies, school administrator associations, universities, non profits, philanthropies, national and global networks, legislators, and spokespeople.

Jenni defended her PhD in Cultural Geography at the University of Minnesota in 2012, and the title of her dissertation is “Baltimore’s Urban Fix: Sounds of Excess and Exclusion in Station North.”​ Her academic background inspires her commitment for social justice with a focus on amplifying the voices of those who have been silenced and whose experiences have been erased. In her early career, she served the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health (ICAH) as Communications Director supporting given and chosen families, youth-created games, and Reproductive Justice advocacy, and where she now serves as board chair. Jenni then joined the National Network of Abortion Funds as Communications Director and Chief Technology Officer with the goal of transforming national paradigms about abortion through strategic communications, digital mapping, and innovative data sharing.

After serving as Communications Director for the National Public Education Support Fund and the Partnership for the Future of Learning to make narrative shifts towards racial equity and meaningful learning in public education, she recently branched out to devote her time more fully to her consulting practice.

Press clippings:

• Jenni Kotting, 3 states in the Deep South are collaborating to advance community schools, Brookings Institution, December 21, 2022
• Jenni Kotting, Chicago community schools show how long-term investments can yield lasting results, Brookings Institution, December 20, 2022
• Jenni Kotting, Community schools in Idaho are bolstered by statewide networks and enriched learning opportunities
  bus, Brookings Institution, December 1, 2022
• Jenni Kotting, Greater Cincinnati’s community learning centers lead place-based learning and holistic neighborhood development, Brookings Institution, November 22, 2022
• Jenni Kotting, Past and future teachers ensure student success in rural Appalachia, Brookings Institution, May 5, 2022
• Jenni Kotting and Hayin Kimner, Community schools in Utah’s Salt Lake City region thrive on place-based partnerships and family engagement, Brookings Institution, April 4, 2022.
• April Callen and Jenni Kotting, Anti-racism and equity in schools is empirical, not ideological, K-12 Dive, October 2021.
• “‘I Thought, Here’s 10,000 Cases’: What Happened At Dulles Airport This Weekend,” NPR’s WAMU, Margaret Barthel, 2020.
• “Why Abortion Access Organizations Are Suing Anti-Choice Internet Trolls,” Gizmodo, Melanie Ehrenkranz, 2018.
• “The Indiana women who are anti-Mike Pence and his ‘1950s mindset’,” Mashable, Rebecca Ruiz, 2016.