Our mission is to close the achievement gap
by giving all inner-city students a platform for critical thinking and self-expression
through engaging them in meaningful journalism study.

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Johnny Duda Executive Director

Johnny Duda brings entrepreneurial non-profit and education experience to SVP. Since graduating from Harvard in 1999, Johnny has been actively involved in the non-profit community as a board member, advisor, and founder of several non-profits. Johnny has taught humanities and creative writing in public and private school settings, and is currently finishing his doctorate in Education Leadership at UCLA, studying the positive effect of journalism studies on overall academic achievement, specifically in relation to students of poverty. In 2006, Johnny co-founded the CASA Foundation (with Bill Bryan, the father of a former student) in an effort to leverage his research in the creation of new programs that address the widening "achievement gap" in inner city public schools. Under the banner of the CASA Foundation, Johnny spent several years doing primary research on the “prime movers” of effective education reform from the perspective of theory and the latest “best practices;” the Student Voice Project is a product of that research.

Caroline Rhude Programs Director

Caroline Rhude comes to SVP from classrooms across all walks of life, providing grounded, recent, real-world classroom experience to the organization. She has helped students grow and learn in environments ranging from Title 1 inner city schools to privileged private schools. Her successes include being the advisor and sponsor for the school newspaper at the Daniel Pearl Journalism Magnet, The Pearl, as it grew to two times its content and budget, as well as leading the students who participated in the newspaper program during all years that she taught at the magnet to have 90% graduate to attend a four year university. Caroline has also taken the background her Master’s in Education has given her and applied it to developing curricula for several groups to help train and educate teachers, as they start to apply Journalistic writing in the classroom as a teaching aid for helping underperforming students. Caroline was named a Reynolds Fellow in 2007, and, over the last three years, has attended conferences across the US working side-by-side with other teachers as they begin to adapt journalism in the classroom to the changing paradigms of modern media and investigative literature.