Janine Turner, Cathy Gillespie, and Constituting America’s Student Ambassadors, Tova Love Kaplan and Dakare Chatman, chat with Constitutional experts on hot-topic issues via Zoom!
Micheal Flaherty, Constituting America’s Best Short Film Judge, is the co-founder of Walden Media, which produced 30 films since its origin in 2000, grossing more than $3.5 billion in worldwide box office including “The Chronicles of Narnia” series, “The Giver,” “Charlotte’s Web” and the “Journey to the Center of the Earth” franchise. Prior to founding Walden Media in 2001, Flaherty designed innovative curricula in the Boston Public School System, which captured national attention from The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe. He designed the curriculum and taught for the Steppingstone Magnet Program for students in the worst public school cluster in Boston.
As an author, Flaherty has been published in National Review, The Boston Business Journal, the Wall Street Journal and American Spectator. He also worked as a speechwriter for William Bulger, former President of the Massachusetts Senate, and Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts Attorney General. Flaherty is a graduate of Tufts University.
Micheal Flaherty has produced several films with an Education Choice theme including: WAITING FOR SUPERMAN; STEP, about a charter school in Baltimore that is succeeding against all odds in one of the USA’s poorest zip codes, and WONT BACK DOWN, a feature film starring Viola Davis, Maggie Gylenhaal, Holly Hunter, and a young Oscar Isaac before he became the star of the new Star Wars movies.
Actress Janine Turner is famous for her role as Maggie O’Connell in televisions’ Northern Exposure. She is the Founder and Co-President of Constituting America which launched in 2010. She is still acting but she is also actively teaching kids about the U.S. Constitution given over 540 speeches to classrooms across the country.
Cathy Gillespie is the co-president of Constituting America and one of 16 private citizens serving on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, helping organize the celebration of our country’s 250th birthday in 2026! She is a former Congressional Chief of Staff and former Commissioner of the White House Fellows Commission.
Tova Love Kaplan is sixteen years old and lives in Chicago, Illinois. She currently serves as the National Youth Director for Constituting America, and runs the National Youth Advisory Council. She is a three-time winner of the “We the Future” contest in the Entrepreneurial (where she created a marketing plan), PSA (entitled “Know Your Rights. Read The Constitution”) and STEM (where she created an app). She is passionate about educating and empowering young people to use their constitutional rights!
Constituting America Student Ambassador Dakare Chatman is 16 years old, and is currently a junior, full-time college student in South Carolina. He has won Constituting America’s We The Future Contest twice, once for best PSA where he reminded viewers the Constitution is “An American Thing, So Know It” and twice for his short film “Man On The Street.” He is also actively involved in our National Youth Advisory Board. He’s a working actor seen most recently in HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and on April 15 in Netflix’s: Outer Banks. Dakare wishes to be an actor, but also a politician. But says you must be an actor to be a politician.