“Her message went straight to the heart.”
-Faculty, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart
I keynote for schools, organizations, and communities on institutional mission and culture, girls' education and global development, and how the story we tell about a place shapes who gets believed.
I'm the founder of Ejoka Education, a nonprofit partnering with Karamojong communities in Uganda, and I still believe the best research is the kind that gets told as a story.
Every talk below is available as a keynote, workshop, or seminar, tailored to your audience and the time you have.
Signature Talks
Mission, Culture, & Purpose
What Actually Activates a Mission / What Educates Your Students is Who You Are
Audience: For organizations, nonprofits, and schools
Drawn from my experience leading a school through transition and my embedded doctoral research living for 1.5 years inside a Ugandan boarding school built entirely around its stated purpose. My focus is on the honest gap between the mission an institution claims, the one its people actually live day to day, and how to close that gap.
From Needy to Needed: Rethinking Girls, Power, and Global Change
Audience: For nonprofits, associations, all-girls schools, and companies focused on girls' education, gender equity, or global development
Challenges the instinct to see girls in the Global South as objects of rescue, and offers a fieldwork-grounded alternative for what actually builds power, agency, and opportunity.
Activating Purpose: A Workshop for Teams and Leadership
Audience: For HR, culture, and leadership teams
Helps staff name where daily practice already lives the organization's purpose, and where it doesn't, closing with concrete shared commitments.
Living the Mission at Home: A Conversation for Parents
Audience: For parent education nights and family engagement events
Translates a school's mission from institutional language into something parents can use at home.
Africa & Global Studies
Designed for student groups & adult learning communities
The Africa We’re Taught, and the Africa That Exists
Audience: For students, in partnership with AP, IB, and global studies curricula
How discourse about Africa gets built, and what it costs the people living the version nobody tells, drawn from 18 months living in a region once classified as “uninhabitable.”
Curiosity & Unfinished Stories: A Uganda Case Study
Audience: For students, as a close-focus alternative to a continent-wide survey
Using map projections and side-by-side population comparisons, students learn to notice distortion and ask sharper questions.
Teaching Africa Outside the Single Story
Audience: For social studies departments and curriculum teams
A professional development workshop: how to spot single-story framing already present in a unit, and teach a specific place well instead of a continent generally.
Living the Mission at Home: A Conversation for Parents
Audience: For parent education nights and family engagement events
Translates a school's mission from institutional language into something parents can use at home.
What People Are Saying
“Jacqueline Gallo's presentation was an inspiring reminder of what it means to be a Sacred Heart educator. She brought real-life examples of how the impact made in the classroom by who you are goes far beyond academics, shaping the girls we teach. Her reflections reinforced our mission of forming the hearts and minds of our students.”
— Lyana Azan, Dean of Teaching and Learning | Upper School English, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart
“Dr. Gallo engaged our students making them comfortable to learn about a part of the world they’d never encountered before. Dr. Gallo created an interactive, hands-on experience that fit our IB Middle Years Programme and understood how to create a safe, fun learning environment where students were able to practice the traits of the IB Learner Profile. Dr. Gallo’s student workshop inspired students to continue their own learning on the topic where she planted a seed.”
— Middle Years IB Educator, New Mexico International School
“It was a very inspirational way to start the day! The keynote was so authentic and genuine; she made her hard work sound easy. Her message went straight to the heart. Loved how it was personal, related to our mission, and even incorporated our theme for the year.”
— Educator, Network of Sacred Heart Schools
About Jacqueline
Jacqueline Gallo, PhD, is an anthropologist of education whose research examines how institutions actually live out what they claim to stand for.
She earned her PhD at the University of Cambridge after 18 months of embedded fieldwork inside a girls' boarding school in Karamoja, Uganda, has presented her work across four continents, and served as a Visiting Scholar in Nigeria.
In 2026, Jacqueline founded Ejoka Education, a nonprofit partnering with Karamojong communities to turn girls' education into real, independent lives, on Karamojong terms. Before turning full-time to research and speaking, she spent twenty years as a teacher, administrator, and Head of School across public, charter, independent, and international schools.
Contact me