Meet Our Staff

Among the staff for our institutes will be:

• Maggie Berthiaume, Director of Debate at Woodward Academy.  Maggie has coached the champions or finalists of nearly every major tournament including NDCA Nationals. Her teams have also won the Georgia state tournament nine times. As a debater Maggie reached the semifinals of CEDA Nationals and was twice a first round at-large invitee to the National Debate Tournament, reaching the quarterfinals her senior year. She's a member of the Georgia Speech and Debate Hall of Fame and has been named Coach of the Year by the GFCA and Educator of the Year by the NDCA.

• Ed Lee, III, Senior Director of the Alben W. Barkley Forum for Debate, Deliberation, and Dialogue, which houses Emory’s nationally acclaimed debate team. He is a relentless advocate for public debate and dialogue.  Lee is a national media commentator for US presidential debates and the use of arguments in public discourse and is routinely seen on CNN discussing presidential debate strategies and their impact on national politics. In 2015 he received the Ross K. Smith National Coach of the Year award and is a three-time recipient of the James Unger Award, given to the coach of the best college debate team in the country
  
  
• Mikaela Malsin, Director of Debate at Emory University. She is the former Director of Debate at Georgetown University.  Malsin previously coached at Wake Forest and the University of Georgia, where she earned her PhD in Communication. In her time coaching, she has worked with several First-Round-At-Large Bid teams at the National Debate Tournament, NDT finalists and other elimination round participants, winners of the Tournament of Champions, and many other successful teams at the high school and college level
  
  
• Lydia Smith, Assistant Director of Campus Engagement at Emory University.  Lydia holds a B.S. in Public Policy with a concentration in Nonprofit Leadership from Georgia State University and a Master of Public Administration degree from Georgia College and State University. She is an Atlanta Urban Debate League alumnae and former Betty J. Maddox Fellow in the Barkley Forum for Debate, Deliberation, and Dialogue. Lydia leads the Emory Conversation Project, advises All Black Emory, and coordinates public debates on campus, and she will be the Director of the Fundamentals of Debate, Deliberation, and Dialogue program this summer
  
  
• Becca Steiner, Assistant Director of Debate at Emory University.  She previously coached at the University of Georgia (where she earned her PhD in Communication), Wake Forest, and the University of Florida. She has coached several First-Round-At-Large teams to the National Debate Tournament, including the 2019 NDT finalists and the 2019 American Debate Association winner