Terry Keleher is the Director of the Racial Justice Leadership Initiative and the Director of the Applied Research Center (ARC)’s Chicago office. He has over twenty years of experience in community organizing, training, curriculum design, research and program evaluation. He is currently developing a comprehensive training curriculum on racial justice leadership, organizing, advocacy and capacity building. He coordinated the national ERASE Initiative (Expose Racism and Advance School Excellence) and authored several reports on race and equity issues, including Facing the Consequences: An Examination of Racial Discrimination in U.S. Public Schools, and Justice By the People: Action Education Workshops for Community Safety and Police Accountability. He came to ARC from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots multi-issue social justice organization where he worked as a community organizer, trainer, researcher and lobbyist. He was a founding steering committee member of the National Organizers Alliance. He has served as a trainer for social change organizations around the country, including the Southern Empowerment Project, Western States Center, and the Center for Third World Organizing, He has testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the California Senate, and was a national recipient of Rainbow/PUSH’s Push for Excellence in Education Award in 2000.

Recent engagements:

• Training : "Framing Social Issues with a Race Analysis" with the Northwestern University's Center for Student Involvement / Peace Project; Evanston, IL (April 2005)
• Presentation: "Taking Action to Challenge Institutional Racism," with the Mather High School Community Leadership Class, Chicago, IL (April 2005)
• Training: "Developing Racially Equitable Public Policy" with the Governor and Cabinet of the State of Michigan, Lansing, MI (February 2005).
• Training: "Race and Equity Retreat" with the Community Change Initiative program staff of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, MD (February 2005).
• Presentation : "Structural Racism 101" at the Race and Public Policy Conference at the University of California, sponsored by the Applied Research Center; Berkeley, CA (November 2004)
• Training: "Developing Community Organizing Campaigns" at the founding conference of the National Network of Arab American Communities, Dearborn, MI (November 2004)
• Presentation: "Different Levels of Racism" at the 2004 Curriculum Fair of the Teachers for Social Justice, Chicago (November 2004)
• Training: "Institutional Change, Power and Organizing" with the Student Democracy Project of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Culture and Politics; Chicago (October 2004)
• Consulting and Strategic Coaching: with four National Student Activism Award grantees funded by the Ford Foundation, including Students for Sensible Drug Policy (Washington, D.C.), Mid-South Peace and Justice Center (Memphis, TN), Student Tenant Organizing Project (Chicago, IL) and News Without Borders (Berkeley, CA).