About Amanda

Photo credit: Jessie Gladin-Kramer - www.jgkphotograpy.com

Amanda Gladin-Kramer is a Hillsborough, North Carolina native who grew up romping on her family's farm and attending Orange County Public Schools. After a brief stint out of state attending college at Tufts University in Massachusetts, studying English and philosophy, she returned to North Carolina. For three years, she worked in communications and education policy at the nonprofit Center for Teaching Quality before starting law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After high school, Amanda spent a year coordinating a bilingual after school program in Orange County for students learning Spanish and English as a Second Language (ESL) students from Mexico and other countries. She also taught adult ESL classes in Somerville, Massachusetts and Durham, North Carolina. Her teaching experience made her think about the challenges ESL students face and the power that community support could have - for both students and families - to help those students succeed in school.

Amanda is tremendously grateful for the education she received in the state's public schools and for the dedicated teachers who inspired her. She became interested in the big picture of how education works. Her experience gave her insight into both the power and promise and struggles and obstacles of public education. The promise is for every child to receive, for only the cost of their willingness to learn, an education that will empower them to succeed. And the hard work of teachers, administrators, volunteers and others makes that happen every day. But Amanda also learned through her research and her work with teachers that this promise is imperiled by lack of funding, frustrated and poorly designed reform initiatives, and the press of poverty and other realities that schools are ill-equipped to surmount. A belief that, with community investment, public education can succeed in the face of these challenges inspired this project.

Amanda enjoys long distance running; cycling (of course!); cooking food inspired by both Southern comfort and world flavors; reading; participating in pro bono projects and listening in on all the amazing speakers at UNC Law; coveting new gizmos for her bike (and the occasional pair of pink high heels too); hiking, horseback riding and hanging out with her family on their farm; and grilling out or kicking back on the couch with her husband, Alejandro, and two cats, Sancho and Quijote.


E-mail Amanda with any questions about BIKE NC.