Amy Skillman is the Academic Director of the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability at Goucher College, where she also teaches in the program.  As a folklorist, Skillman’s has occurred at the intersection of culture and tension, where paying attention to culture can serve to mediate social change and cultural equity. She has advised artists and community-based organizations on the implementation of programs that honor and conserve cultural traditions, guided them to potential resources, and developed programs to help build their capacity to sustain these initiatives. Drawing on extensive research and documentation, Skillman has developed a variety of public programs that bring awareness to issues of importance in these communities. Her work has included an oral history/leadership empowerment initiative with immigrant and refugee women in Central Pennsylvania, a Grammy-nominated recording of old time fiddlers in Missouri, and a yearlong arts residency with alternative education high school students rooted in the ethnography of their lives. Skillman recently curated a major traveling exhibition that examines the role of folk arts as a catalyst for activism in communities throughout Pennsylvania. She received her MA degree in Folklore and Folklife from the University of California, Los Angeles and her Bachelor of Arts from St. Lawrence University in a self-designed major focusing on Cultural Minorities and the Immigrant Experience.