Dr. Kelly Ocasio founded Amplify Equity as a vehicle to drive equity-centered transformation across organizations. Amplify Equity is a Woman and Minority-owned Business Enterprise located in Austin, TX that works nationally with education systems, schools, and organizations who aspire to shift their cultures, structures, and practices toward equity & justice. Amplify supports educators and leaders through providing capacity-building opportunities, personalized coaching, broad community engagement, equity audit, and leveraging liberatory design practices to co-construct solutions to local challenges around equity. 

Kelly is an educator, coach, facilitator, experience designer, and capacity-builder who partners with leaders and organizations striving to transform their systems toward equity and justice. She approaches her work through a critical lens, understanding that organizations and systems perpetuate the inequity that is baked into the tapestry of our culture. Her passion for this work is grounded in her personal identities and lifetime experience of  navigating the world as a “cultural border-crosser.” As a multi-racial, bi-cultural, bi-sexual, and cisgender woman, she knows first-hand what it feels like to never fully “fit” into a mold. She has seen the lack of equity and justice play out in our various institutions and systems first-hand and is driven to tackle the system head-on to enact transformational change. She is a systems thinker who understands and leverages individuals through a collective impact approach to systems-change. She is a relationship-builder who believes in the power of interpersonal connections to impact broader change. 

Kelly is a former educator, higher education professional, state education administrator, researcher, and education consultant with two decades of experiences across K-12, higher education, and state leadership. Prior to founding Amplify Equity, she was a Senior Consultant with 2Revolutions where she focused on systems change efforts. Before that, she worked at the Texas Education Agency as the Director of Pathways and the Director of the GEAR UP State Grant. Before these roles, she held various positions across K-12 and higher education. She started her professional career as a dual language teacher in schools in Texas and Wisconsin. She holds a BS in Elementary Education and Spanish from UW-Madison and an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the UT – San Antonio. She also holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis and Curriculum & Instruction from UW-Madison. Her research focused on Latinx teachers’ pathways into education and identifying the opportunities and barriers to the Latinx community pursuing a career in teaching.