Biography

Kelli Pryor serves as executive director of Baxter Academy for Technology and Science in Portland, Maine. The STEM-focused, project-based high school opened its doors in 2013 to 126 students. Now, in its fifth year, the school has grown to its cap enrollment of 400 and is renovating an old brick bakery into a 21st-century schoolhouse that features science and engineering labs, as well as a central fabrications lab. The school just received a ten-year term for its renewed charter contract. Ms. Pryor’s background is in journalism and screenwriting. She directed Portland’s CAFAM Chinese School for more than a decade and became the founding board chair of Baxter Academy because her twin daughters wanted a STEM option for high school.