Monique W. Morris

Monique W. Morris (now publishing as Monique Couvson, Ed.D.) is an award-winning author, social justice scholar, and philanthropy executive with more than three decades of experience focused on education, civil rights, and juvenile and criminal justice. She is president and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color and the founder and board chair of the National Black Women's Justice Institute, where her work centers on improving educational and justice-system outcomes for girls and women of color.

Couvson is the author of Cultivating Joyful Learning Spaces for Black Girls: Insights Into Interrupting School Pushout (ASCD, 2022), which examines how educational policies and practices contribute to the marginalization and criminalization of Black girls and offers strategies for creating affirming school environments. Her other books include Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (2016), Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls (2019), Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century (2014), and the novel Too Beautiful for Words (2012). She also served as executive producer and co-writer of the 2019 documentary film Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, expanding her research and advocacy on school-to-confinement pathways into