Kurtis Tanaka

Prior to joining Mellon, Kurtis served as senior program manager for justice initiatives at Ithaka S+R, a strategic consulting and research not-for-profit. As program lead, Kurtis directed numerous projects on increasing access to and enhancing the quality of higher education opportunities in US prisons. Broadly framed around the question of how people gain access to information, his work explored the role of technology in higher education in prison programs, the impact of Departments of Corrections’ media review policies and digital surveillance on educational quality, and the practical and ethical challenges of archiving creative work made by people who are incarcerated.

Kurtis holds a bachelor’s degree in classical languages from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in the art and archaeology of the Mediterranean world from the University of Pennsylvania.