Professional Staff
Executive Director
Scott Deatherage
Phone: 312-427-0175
Email: Scott@UrbanDebate.org
Chairman of the Board:
Lenny Gail
Phone: 312-427-0175
Email: LennyGail@UrbanDebate.org
Executive Assistant:
Anthony Jardina
Phone: 312-427-0175
Email: AnthonyJardina@UrbanDebate.org
Senior Program Consultant:
Les Lynn
Phone: 312-427-8101
Email: LesLynn@UrbanDebate.org
Senior Regional Program Officer:
Holly Reiss
Phone: 312-427-0176
Email: HollyReiss@UrbanDebate.org
Deputy Director and Director of External Affairs:
Eric Tucker
Phone: 312-427-0152
Email: EricTucker@UrbanDebate.org
Scott Deatherage joined the NAUDL as its Executive
Director in the spring of 2008. Dr. Deatherage comes to the
NAUDL from the Department of Communications Studies at Northwestern
University where he served as a Senior Lecturer. He received
a Ph.D. in Communication from Northwestern, an M.A. in Communication
Studies from Baylor University, and a B.B.A. in Economics and Finance,
also from Baylor.
As the Director of the Northwestern University Debate Society since
1994, Dr. Deatherage established an unparalleled record of coaching
success. His Northwestern teams won the NDT National Championship
seven times since 1994. He also coached four individuals to
Top Speaker awards at the National Debate Tournament. In 2007
he received the George W. Ziegelmueller National Debate Tournament
Coach of the Year Award, in 2003 he was named the Pelham National
Coach of the Year, and he was voted the "Coach of the Decade"
for the 1990's by his peers.
Included in the classes Dr. Deatherage taught at Northwestern were:
Mass Media and Political Campaign Strategies, Political Communication,
Rhetoric of Social Movements, and Theories of Argumentation. He was
twice a finalist for the Charles Deering McCormick University Distinguished
Lecturer award.
Chairman of the Board Leonard A. Gail has worked with the NAUDL since December 2006, including serving as the Interim Executive Director through the winter of 2008. Mr. Gail comes to the NAUDL from the United States Department of Justice where he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois. Mr. Gail is a Vice Chairman and founder of the Celiac Disease Center at the University of Chicago, Chairman of the Sinai Hospital Medical Group, and a member of the National Advisory Council of the School of Communication at Northwestern University. He has also served as a board member of the Legal Executive Forum and taught trial advocacy at the Law School of the University of Chicago.
Mr. Gail graduated from Dartmouth College in 1985 Magna Cum Laude and Harvard Law School in 1988 Cum Laude. After graduation, he clerked for the Honorable James B. Moran in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. After his clerkship, he joined Kirkland and Ellis as an Associate. In 1991, he and several others left Kirkland & Ellis to form Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar and Scott where he became a partner and worked until 2000. At that time, he became Deputy General Counsel for Bank One where he had responsibility for litigation, bankruptcy, regulatory proceedings, real estate, technology and finance and administration within the Company's Law, Compliance and Government Relations Department before and throughout the merger with JPMorgan.
Mr. Gail debated at Maine East High School in the Chicago area from 1977 - 1981. He was twice the state champion and successfully competed nationally, including a second place finish at the 1981 National Forensic League National Tournament. He also debated at Dartmouth College from 1981 - 1984 where he won numerous awards in inter-collegiate competitive debate, including first place speaker and first place team at the 1984 National Debate Tournament. He was voted "Debater of the Decade" by the National Debate Tournament's Coaches panel and also represented the US in Japan for the biennial Japanese-American exchange debates.
Executive Assistant Anthony Jardina joined the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues in June 2007. Prior to starting with the NAUDL, Anthony was a Project Assistant at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He had previously worked with the Chicago Urban Debate League teaching at the Chicago Summer Debate Institute and helping coach both Kennedy High School and Walter Payton College Prep.
Anthony graduated from Northwestern University in the spring of 2006 majoring in Political Science and Communication Studies. In Communication Studies, he received the Departmental Excellence Award for Undergraduate Students. He has also had an accomplished debate career. While at Northwestern, he debated for three years, and he and his partner were selected as one of the top 16 debate teams in the country receiving a First Round Bid to the National Debate Tournament. In high school, he was the Texas state debate champion winning the Texas Forensics Association Tournament. He grew up in Dallas Texas.
Senior Programming Consultant Les Lynn was named founding Executive Director of the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL), the national leadership organization of the urban debate movement, in January 2002. In 2000, he was hired by the Open Society Institute to be a national consultant for its Youth Initiatives. Beginning in 1995, Les was the founding Director of the Chicago Debate Commission, which brought academic debate back into the Chicago Public Schools system-wide, while also a Century Fellow at the University of Chicago, where he did graduate work in English Literature and remains a dissertation away from the doctorate.
Mr. Lynn taught English at Whitney Young Magnet High School in the Chicago Public Schools for seven years, where he won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, was twice selected to be a Mellon Fellow, and won an Oppenheimer grant. He has a B.A. from Northwestern and an M.A. in English from the University of Illinois. Les is a former nationally-ranked debater for Northwestern University, where he was President of the Hardy Debate Society.
As Director of the NAUDL, Mr. Lynn has been principally responsible for the acquisition of over $1.5 million in foundation and corporate grants and more than $500,000 in contributions from individual supporters. Under Mr. Lynn's watch, the Urban Debate Network has grown from 14 to 18 cities, with a commensurate increase in the total number of urban debaters participating. Mr. Lynn currently sits on the Advisory Board of several national urban education or debate education organizations.
Senior Regional Program Officer Holly Giselle Reiss manages a portfolio of Urban Debate Leagues for the National Association for Urban Debate League. She served as the project administrator and then executive director for DEBATE-Kansas City, the Urban Debate League in the Greater Kansas City Area from 2000-2006. She also served as an educational consultant for the UDL, institutionalizing it within the Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, school systems. Ms. Reiss developed the Board of DEBATE-Kansas City, and built relationships with civic and community leaders, in order to enhance the sustainability of the League. While working with the individuals involved in urban debate, she became inspired by the power of debate to change lives, and ultimately, change the world. She views Urban Debate as the single most important activity for intellectual achievement, emotional growth, and social change in today's educational institutions.
Ms. Reiss received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Kansas in 1995 and her Master of Arts degree in Communication Studies from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2006. She has been a lecturer in public speaking and interpersonal communication for both the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rockhurst University. Ms. Reiss has presented papers in Xi'an, China and across the United States. As a Doctoral student in Communications Studies at the University of Kansas, she led research projects on the relationship of the academic and social benefits of urban debate. In particular, this study investigates the potential of participation in debate to decrease physical aggressiveness.
Deputy Director and Director of External Relations Eric M. Tucker was the founding Director of Programs with the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues in 2002. Prior to that, he founded and coordinated the Rhode Island Urban Debate League, a statewide youth development program that works in four urban districts. He has held previous positions in the Office of the Superintendent in the Providence School Department, the Institute of Education at the University of London within the Bedford Group for Lifecourse and Statistical Studies, the Institute for Elementary and Secondary Education, and the National Coalition of Advocates for Students. Raised in Iowa and Japan, he has consulted with non-governmental organizations and school systems in 15 states and on three continents.
Dr. Tucker completed his Doctorate at the University of Oxford with the support of a Marshall Scholarship. His doctoral research investigated the development of measurement instruments to help maximize return on investment (ROI) for social enterprise that promotes social capital formation and community mobilization. He also graduated with distinction from Oxford with an M.Sc. in Education Research Methodology from the Department of Educational Studies. He holds honors degrees in Public Policy and Africana Studies from Brown University where he received the Truman Scholarship, Royce Fellowship, Noah Krieger Prize for Public Policy research, and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Dr. Tucker has also been appointed as a Public Policy Research Fellow at Temple University's Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought in Philadelphia.
Dr. Tucker is the co-editor (with Madhu Viswanathan and Geoffrey Walford) of The Sage Handbook of Measurement. His doctoral thesis, which was entitled Towards a More Rigorous Scientific Approach to Social Measurement: An Empirical and Methodological Enquiry into the Development of Grounded Indicators of Social Capital Formation, has been published as scholarly articles and a book chapter. He also co-authored Argumentation and Debate: An Educator's Activities Manual (2004) and (with Les Lynn) Building an Urban Debate League: a Practitioner's Handbook (forthcoming). He also co-wrote How to Build a Debate Program: An Organizer's Manual (forthcoming).
