Debate Summer Workshop

Chris Paredes is Director of Debate at St. Lucy's Priory High School and a Class of 2005 Damien Debate Alumni. He received his B.A. in English and Philosophy from Amherst College in 2009 after which he returned to coach Damien before attending law school. He received his J.D. from Emory University School of Law in 2013 after which he served as the Google Public Policy Fellow at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Washington, D.C. At the capital, he worked with numerous civil rights organizations to advocate for universal access to telecommunication services, including national broadband internet through the Lifeline program, which had been one of the affirmative cases Damien used for the 2010 social services topic. He also served as the Broadband and Telecommunications Policy Fellow at the International Association for K-12 Online Learning where he advocated for the modernization of the U.S. education system and closure of the digital divide by expanding support for broadband in schools and libraries as part of the FCC's E-Rate program and President Obama's ConnectED initiative, work that would become the inspiration for the Damien E-Rate affirmative for the 2018 education topic. He returned to California to work as a Civil Rights Fellow at the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing in the Legal and the Legislative & Regulatory divisions where he authored one of the first draft of California's Housing Regulations under the Fair Employment and Housing Act.