• Baltimore Fishbowl features OSI Fellow Debbie Ramsey

    This week, Baltimore Fishbowl featured a profile of 2016 OSI Community Fellow Debbie Ramsey, detailing the former police officer’s work founding Unified Efforts, which seeks to broaden the horizons of young people in Penn North through after-school and summer programming. An excerpt: “If we can expose our children to new career paths, that will take […]

  • OSI Director Diana Morris named to Johnny Olszewski’s Transition Team

    Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Jr. has named Open Society Institute – Baltimore Director Diana Morris co-chair of his Transition Team Education Committee, along with Edward Gilliss, a lawyer and partner at Royston, Mueller, McLean & Reid LLP, and a former chairman of the Baltimore County school board. “I’m eager to take on this challenge,” says […]

  • WYPR on OSI’s 20th Anniversary, 2018 Fellows cohort

    Yesterday, Sheilah Kast, host of WYPR’s On the Record, interviewed Open Society Institute Director Diana Morris and OSI Community Fellowships Director Pamela King about the organization’s 20th Anniversary and the 2018 cohort of OSI Community Fellows. Listen here. Kast then profiled 2018 Fellow Eric Fishel, whose project, Baltimore Foodparks, aims to convert some of the city’s […]

  • OSI Fellow Munib Lohrasbi and Disability Rights Maryland to release report on confinement of women with disabilities

    On Friday, OSI Community Fellow Munib Lohrasbi will host a press conference at the office of OSI grantee Disability Rights Maryland (DRM) to announce the release of a report, “Segregation and Suicide: Confinement at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women.” Senator Susan Lee, Delegate Jazz Lewis, and Delegate-elect Sara Love join DRM Executive Director Robin […]

  • OSI hosts second public health advocacy and leadership training

    This weekend in Easton, Maryland, Open Society Institute’s Addiction and Health Equity team hosted its second Advocacy and Leadership Training for people with lived experience with addiction. The first training took place last month in Frederick. The trainings are intended to help build the field of advocates around the state and increase the representation of people […]

  • OSI Fellow David Hornbeck to speak at Be the Change forum on Kirwan Commission

    David Hornbeck, a 2012 OSI Community Fellow and the former schools superintendent in Maryland and Philadelphia, will speak at a Be the Change forum on the expected recommendations of the Kirwan Commission, which is set to overhaul education policy throughout the state. The forum is Thursday, December 6th, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 2501 Manhattan […]

  • OSI Community Fellows celebrated as “Leading Women”

    Earlier this week, OSI Community Fellows Lanaea C. Featherstone (2013) and Shantell Roberts (2017) attended the Daily Record’s “Leading Women” celebration at the Westin Annapolis. Both Featherstone and Roberts were named as Leading Women by the paper in October. Honorees, who were selected by previous Top 100 Women and Leading Women winners, were judged on […]

  • 2018 OSI Community Fellow Brittany Young in Forbes Magazine

    Recently, 2018 OSI Community Fellow, Brittany Young was interviewed by Forbes Magazine. In “Innovation is a Fancy Word for Survival,” Young talks about her project, B-360, which uses Baltimore’s dirt bike culture to not only introduce young people to education and career opportunities in the STEM fields but also to change perceptions of the sport. […]

  • 2018 Community Fellow Aarti Sidhu featured in UMD Law profile

    2018 OSI Community Fellow, Aarti Sidhu, was recently featured on the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law website. Through her fellowship, Represent Youth: Baltimore School Justice Initiative – which will operate out of the University’s Clinical Law Program – Sidhu will directly represent Baltimore City Public School students who are facing suspensions […]

  • One year later Safe City Baltimore having a big impact

    Last month, Catalina Rodriguez-Lima, director of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MIMA), OSI-Baltimore’s partner in the Safe City Baltimore immigrant defense and education initiative, went to Vera Institute of Justice’s Detroit convening to report on the initiative’s progress a year after OSI Director Diana Morris joined Mayor Catherine Pugh and Rodriguez-Lima at City Hall to […]