April Yvonne Garrett
Founder & President

April Yvonne Garrett is the founder and president of Civic Frame, a nonprofit organization that uses art and intellectual work to encourage civic participation, media literacy, and critical thinking.

A native of Baltimore and the first in her family to attend college, April excelled in the education and non-profit arenas, often as the only black woman making major decisions that shaped intellectual and campus life at Columbia, Emory, and Harvard Universities, as well as the civil rights agenda of the NAACP.  She is a 1988 graduate of Baltimore City College, the third oldest public high school in the United States.  Earning degrees in Islamic studies from Kenyon College in 1992, higher and adult education from Teachers College Columbia University in 1993, and African American Religious History from Harvard Divinity School in 1997, provided her with a broad interdisciplinary foundation of knowledge to apply in her work.  In 2009, she completed Hearing is Believing, the audio documentary institute at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies.

She has served as the Resident Program Assistant of the Intercultural Resource Center at Columbia University from 1992 until 1993 and as Director of New Student Orientation and Assistant Director of Student Activities at Emory University from 1993 until 1995.  April was a Harvard University Presidential Administrative Fellow in 1997.  From 1997 until 1999 she served as the Fellows Officer of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, a Freshman Proctor for the Freshmen Dean's Office, as the Visiting Scholars Coordinator for the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute and the American Repertory Theatre, and as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.  In 2000, she joined the senior staff of the national NAACP as the first Director of Administration and Strategic Planning.

April has provided administrative, editorial, and research assistance on such notable publications as the Encarta Africana, The Harvard Guide to African American History, Transition Magazine, and the Microsoft/Black Entertainment Television 19th century online African American art exhibit.  She was also the special guest editor of the first Afro Chronicles of the Afro-American Newspapers Commemorative Edition of the NAACP 91st Annual Convention, which earned her the National Newspapers Publishers Association's Leon H. Washington Award for Best Special Edition in 2001 and is a contributing essayist in the anthology Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts, edited by Ayana Byrd and Akiba Solomon.  April served as the guest editor for a year-long series on race and ethnicity entitled, DiverCity: The Changing Face of Baltimore that appeared in Baltimore Magazine monthly during the year 2006.

She has made an impact on every environment she has inhabited and her accolades include the E. Malcolm Anderson Cup for outstanding student leadership from Kenyon College, appointment to the Columbia University Student Senate, and election by her peers to represent Harvard Divinity School as class marshal.  April has also received awards from Sigma Nu Fraternity, the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Affairs at Emory University, the Southern Regional Orientation Workshop and the National Orientation Directors Association.  The Daily Record named her one of Maryland's Top 100 Women in 2005.  

April is currently a member of the Kenyon College Alumni Council, founder and co-chair of the Kenyon College Alumni of Color Collective, founder and chair of CITY NOW & FOREVER, a coalition of Baltimore City College alumni committed to mentoring students, middle school recruitment and career and college preparation, and is the Immediate Past President of the Harvard Divinity School Alumni/ae of African Descent.  She is also on the advisory board of the Justice Project of Philander Smith College, the National Black Pre-Law Admissions and Preparation Conference and Law Fair and the National Black Pre-MBA Conference and Business School Fair. Additionally, April served as a member of the Baltimore City Council Task Force on Childhood Obesity, and is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the First and St. Stephens United Church of Christ, an Open and Affirming congregation in Rodgers Forge, Maryland.