A M Y K A S L O W
Amy Kaslow is a writer and photographer with a lens on at-risk societies, worldwide. She’s spent the past four decades writing, broadcasting, and photographing in the world’s trouble spots, chronicling the immediate aftermath of conflict and well into the post-war period. Domestically, she focuses on fallout from the failed War on Poverty. Kaslow’s been a columnist, contributor, staff writer and editor for Fortune Magazine, Institutional Investor, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Huffington Post, SLATE, The Middle East, Moment, Emerging Markets, Europe Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Quarterly, The International Economy and many other news outlets. She was the longtime lead international economic correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and special global crisis correspondent for public radio's Marketplace.
Soon into her career documenting how traumatized populations stabilize themselves, even flourish, Kaslow learned that readers and listeners want to help in practical ways. And they want to know how. She created K/NOW, an online missive probing one essential issue lost in the daily feed of turbulence. Paired with a stunning image, K/NOW delivers short, crisp and precise narratives. Each is followed by DO NOW, one paragraph full of hyper-linked ways to engage individually or with an organization, locally or across the world. K/NOW equips readers with tools to change the equation. Forbes Magazine named K/NOW a top ten must-read for 2019.
Kaslow’s work provides vivid material for Life After War, a series of traveling photojournalism exhibitions pairing large-format images with contextual storyboards, and a wide range of gallery experiences to engage communities in conversation. The focus is on the most critical challenges that post-conflict populations confront as they try to rebuild their lives: deeply scarring trauma, gang control, sexual violence, human trafficking. Among the hosts: The Center for Conflict Resolution, the George Bush School at Texas A&M, the US Library of Congress, the Palmer Gallery at Vassar College. IATI’s Black Box Theater in New York’s East Village, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business. Kaslow mounted her latest exhibition at Vassar College for its Mellon Foundation Consortium on Forced Migration and Mental Health. “Life After War: Trapped” focuses on the supply side of human trafficking, featuring twelve turbulent countries where the trade in human beings is integral to the local economy. Twelve portraits of resilience tell the stories of local communities developing their own coping mechanisms, some organized, to push back on the industry of abuse.
Active in the domestic policy arena, Kaslow has fostered collaboration among businesses, educators, grassroots groups and political leaders to convert the wide array of at-risk communities into local assets. On talent issues, she’s given university talks, corporate guidance, Congressional testimony, and helped municipal, state government and federal agencies glean critical insights from the field. Among her advisees: Manpower Inc., Junior Achievement, the ACT Foundation, the National Academies, Congressional committees, the White House, and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. The most effective tool is to tell the stories of low income learners and earners who surmount their challenges. Kaslow reaches a diverse audience by conveying what is happening on the ground with context: history's lessons and the broad horizon of future needs. Her outreach ranges from testifying before the House Science Committee on critical skills needs to a TEDx talk on how college students can best position themselves for meaningful work.
Kaslow led Sinai House, an award-winning wrap-around transitional housing program for homeless families in Southeast Washington, D.C. She was an eight-year White House appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s governing council and its executive committee, to broaden lessons of the Holocaust and prevent contemporary genocide. She served many years as a trustee of Living Classrooms, an education, community action and economic development initiative enriching Washington DC’s long ignored low- to no-income earners, from early childhood to adulthood. She has served and chaired K-12 school boards, to boost experiential global education, STEM initiatives, and programs to attract and retain teachers. She serves on the board of the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative. She is a trustee of Ringling College of Art & Design. Kaslow has received awards and honors, from Northern Virginia Community College’s award to distinguished speakers to MOMENT's International Change-Maker Award for global reporting on crisis zones. She is a member of the Belizean Grove.