I first met Elise Carter at a public meeting in spring 2021. Elise sat with her colleague and friend Trinity Walsh in the auditorium of Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, where I had graduated in 1993. The community assembled to talk about a social equity course Elise and Trinity were slated to teach as a high school elective. Enough parents spoke out that night against the course that it was removed from the curriculum.

That’s why when I learned that Elise was named the 2025 recipient of the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Award, I had to talk to her. The award is given to an individual whose activities in Black affairs significantly impact education and the achievement of equal opportunity. It is presented by the National Education Association in partnership with the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History.

Just because Elise and Trinity’s social equity course was canceled and the political criticisms turned from CRT to DEI, didn’t mean they gave up.

First, after that May meeting, “We cried a lot,” Elise said. But the conversation soon became, “We can do this work outside of the school.” Instead of fighting with parents who didn’t see the value in a multicultural education, they decided to focus on the families “who know this work is important and knows that it needs to start younger,” she said.

Elise and Trinity founded Northern Kentucky Inclusive Students In Education as a nonprofit educational initiative specializing in diversity, equity and inclusion for college and career readiness. Students participate on Saturdays for the whole year and it only costs $50. They go on field trips, learn history and hear from guest speakers with lived experience.

“I try to give them those histories that they’re not taught in school,” Elise said. These are histories that Elise has the credentials to teach but remain underutilized in public education. NISE starts the education with understanding intersectionality, because when you show students how someone they love may fit into a marginalized group, then everything they learn from there becomes more relatable.

Elise’s tenacity and persistence makes sure that children are educated in a way that prepares them to thrive in our diverse global society. It’s why she has also received the Smith-Wilson Award for Civil and Human Rights in Education. It’s why she was the 2024 Innovative Teacher Award Winner for Northern Kentucky, and why she was also named a 2024 Upstander Awards Finalist by The Nancy and David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center.

NISE goes into the community with programming and volunteering opportunities for both kids and adults. That combination of classroom plus experiential education truly honors what it means to value diversity, equity and inclusion.

Elise does all of this while still teaching business and leadership courses at Highlands High School. When she was hired in 2012, she was the school’s first Black teacher.

She keeps her nonprofit organization separate, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t open with her students. She’s not afraid of hard conversations. She knows kids are curious and she also stresses to her students that “everybody doesn’t have the same thought process as you or your family, and that’s OK. True diversity makes room for all perspectives.

That’s hard to remember when legislation is chipping away at anything related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The political sentiment these days is to cancel, not include. I asked Elise what kept her going after her social equity class was shut down. She said, “I’m a mother of a Black son, and so he is essentially my ‘why’… and when your ‘why’ is someone who is marginalized, you can’t just sit and hope that someone else is going to do it.”