Clarice L. Jackson | Speaking
When we know how children learn to read, what will we do with what we know?
Clarice L. Jackson brings more than two decades of literacy advocacy, dyslexia leadership, institution building, family advocacy, policy engagement, and community leadership to audiences across the United States and internationally.
The conversation your leadership team cannot afford to avoid.
We know substantially more about how children learn to read, why some children struggle, and what effective instruction requires.
But knowledge does not implement itself.
Clarice Jackson speaks to the space between what institutions know and what institutions are willing to organize themselves to do. Through the framework of Educational Will, she challenges leaders to examine the relationship between knowledge, responsibility, institutional action, and the literacy outcomes we continue to accept.
Knowledge.
Responsibility.
Will.
Action.
Watch + Listen
Hear Clarice before you bring her in.
A few recent conversations — on dyslexia, family advocacy, national policy, and the ideas behind Literacy as Exodus. Each one opens on YouTube in a new tab.
Conscious Pathways
Advocating for Literacy: Clarice Jackson on Dyslexia, Education, and Social Justice
Watch on YouTube →
Why Bring Clarice Into the Room?
This is not another presentation about the literacy crisis.
Clarice brings together perspectives that are too often separated — reading science, dyslexia, family advocacy, Black literacy, public policy, institution building, faith, history, leadership, and community. The result moves audiences from “What is the problem?” toward “What are we responsible for doing about it?”
Reframe the Conversation
Move literacy discussions beyond statistics and toward the responsibilities created by what we now know about reading.
Connect Knowledge to Leadership
Help leaders examine how research, instruction, policy, resources, institutional decisions, and accountability intersect.
Restore Human Stakes
Reconnect systems-level decisions to the children, families, educators, and communities living with their consequences.
Move Toward Action
Challenge audiences to consider what Educational Will requires of the institutions and communities they lead.
Built for rooms where decisions are made.
Districts + Superintendents
For leadership teams confronting literacy outcomes, instructional direction, intervention, implementation, and institutional responsibility.
School Boards
For boards seeking a deeper understanding of literacy, governance, accountability, educational opportunity, and the consequences of institutional decisions.
Educators + Literacy Leaders
For professionals responsible for translating what we know about reading into instruction, intervention, and student outcomes.
Conferences + Associations
For organizations looking for a keynote that connects literacy science with leadership, advocacy, history, families, and institutional action.
Higher Education
For colleges, universities, educator-preparation programs, researchers, and emerging education leaders.
Community + Faith Leaders
For institutions seeking to understand literacy as a question of knowledge, participation, opportunity, responsibility, and freedom.
Signature Topics
Conversations Clarice brings to the stage.
Literacy as Exodus
The ideas at the center of Clarice Jackson’s forthcoming book: dignity, knowledge, Educational Will, action, institution building, and what literacy makes possible.
Educational Will
What happens when knowledge about effective reading instruction exists, yet systems fail to organize themselves around that knowledge?
Black Literacy Matters®
An examination of literacy, Black learners, families, institutions, history, responsibility, and the conditions necessary for meaningful change.
Dyslexia, Families + Advocacy
What more than two decades of dyslexia advocacy reveal about identification, instruction, family knowledge, institutional response, and the importance of acting early.
From Knowledge to Action
A leadership conversation for educators, boards, districts, organizations, and communities examining the gap between knowing and doing.
Literacy + Educational Freedom
What history can teach us about the value of literacy, institutional power, participation, independence, and what becomes possible when people can read.
The Speaker
A mother’s question became a life’s work.
Clarice L. Jackson is a nationally and internationally recognized literacy advocate, author, institution builder, and speaker. Her journey began with one child — a second grader who could not read and who would later become her daughter. She has spent more than two decades asking what happens after we know.
- Author, Literacy as Exodus
- Founder & CEO, Institute for Black Literacy
- Founder & Convener, Black Literacy Matters®
- Founder & Executive Director, Voice Advocacy Center
- Author, 2014 NAACP National Dyslexia Resolution
- IDA Dyslexia Definition Steering Committee
- Nebraska Department of Education Literacy Advisory Panel
- Orton-Gillingham Classroom Educator
- Ordained Minister
Featured / Heard On
NPR · Fox News · Roland Martin Unfiltered · The 74
Download Clarice’s One-Page BioWhat should your audience leave asking?
- 01
What do we know about how children learn to read?
- 02
What responsibility follows that knowledge?
- 03
Where is the gap between what our institution knows and what our institution does?
- 04
What have families been required to carry that institutions should have carried?
- 05
What does Educational Will look like in practice?
- 06
What are we prepared to build, change, protect, or sustain because we believe children can learn?
The book starts the conversation. The room decides what happens next.
Literacy as Exodus: The Blueprint for Reclaiming Educational Will
Coming December 8, 2026 · Published by Lady Wisdom Press
Speaking Inquiry
Bring this conversation to your leadership team.
Planning a district convening, board retreat, education conference, professional learning experience, university event, association meeting, community gathering, or national conversation?
Invite Clarice Jackson to bring a challenging, evidence-informed conversation about literacy, leadership, responsibility, and Educational Will to your audience.
Download One-Page BioSpeaking inquiries are reviewed by Clarice’s team. Submitting an inquiry does not create a contractual commitment.