Katie Bliss

Directing Advocate

Katie Bliss is a Directing Advocate and oversees the California Higher Education Project at Youth Law Center (YLC), which advocates to implement programming and support policy across the state to ensure juvenile justice-involved youth have direct pathways to higher education. Katie is also the founder of Project Change at the San Mateo County Community College District, a state model program and the first comprehensive, institutionalized, community college-funded program in California to provide in-person college instruction inside juvenile youth facilities, wrap-around student support services on campus, and direct access to post-secondary education for juvenile justice-involved youth. Katie created Project Change while teaching English at the College of San Mateo and City College of San Francisco as an Associate Professor. Having dropped out of high school and been incarcerated for the majority of her adolescence in juvenile hall, her drive to create pathways to higher education for youth in the juvenile justice system comes from both personal and professional experience. She holds a master's degree in English literature, two certificates in post-secondary reading and composition, and a bachelor's degree in English composition from San Francisco State University and Notre Dame de Namur University.    

Education:

M.A., Notre Dame de Namur University
B.A., Notre Dame de Namur University