Open Up Resources Blog

D. Lacy Asbill is the Co-Founding Director of Moving Forward Institute, a nonprofit organization that focuses on students’ emotional well being as a critical strategy for improving their academic achievement. Founded fifteen years ago in Oakland, CA, the organization has taught more than ten thousand of the most underserved youth in their community, and trained over five hundred young adults to serve as a new generation of educational leaders. Lacy’s proudest professional accomplishment is her role in authoring Reading with Relevance: a literacy program that guides students and teachers through the process of reading relevant, culturally diverse, socially and emotionally rich literature. Now, Lacy is on a mission: sharing and scaling the program she’s built for (and with!) her students, to inspire relevant reading experiences, heartfelt conversations, and instructional breakthroughs in classrooms across the nation.