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In this jam packed episode, Kellee Knighten Hough (The social media personality known as “Kell Belle”) and Maura Quint (Campaign/Comms Director, Americans For Tax Fairness) discuss the importance of humor in American political discourse. As a bonus, our podcast law firm of Pearson & Pearson breaks down some recent and significant legal issues.
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Attorney
Melba Pearson is an attorney specializing in civil rights and criminal law, with an emphasis on policy. She is the Director of Prosecution Projects at the Gordon Institute for Public Policy, and co-manager for the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPI) Project based at Florida International University. The PPIs aim to bring more transparency, equity and racial justice in the criminal justice system. Ms. Pearson also serves as Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She has a consulting practice through her firm MVP Law, which includes assessments of police departments and creating community engagement strategies around criminal justice/civil rights issues. Before joining FIU, Ms. Pearson spent three years as Deputy Director of the ACLU of Florida where she worked to change police practices, expand voting rights, and reform the criminal justice system. Previously, Ms. Pearson was an Assistant State Attorney in Miami-Dade County for 16 years, culminating as Assistant Chief in the Career Criminal/Robbery Unit supervising junior attorneys while prosecuting homicides. She serves as Vice Chair of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section, co-chair of the Prosecution Function Committee, President of the National Black Prosecutors Association Foundation, and Vice Chair of the Florida Justice Center. Ms. Pearson regularly provides legal analysis for CourtTV, Law & Crime, local networks and through op-eds that have been published in the Miami Herald, Washington Post and other national outlets. She is the editor/author of the book… Read More
Legal, Political & Cultural Analyst | Writer | Researcher
In Los Angeles, Dr. Pearson is a Legal, Political and Cultural Analyst and Strategist who appears weekly on the popular, smart, and entertaining radio program, Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang, which airs on SiriusXM Progress 127.
Dr. Pearson’s gift is that she explains complex ideas simply.
Dr. Pearson taught at colleges and level one research universities; but she needed a bigger classroom. She appears on tv, radio, and podcasts where she can teach covertly–she has insight that is different, thoughtful, refreshing, and compels audiences to think critically, which is essential to the preservation of democracy.
Dr. Pearson has appeared as an expert on the Emmy Award-winning talk show Dr. Phil on CBS. She also appears frequently on an impressive list of popular networks including NewsNation, Cheddar News, Fox 5 DC, Fox LiveNOW, and on affiliate stations across the country for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. Besides Sirius XM, she is a regular guest on Los Angeles’ longest talk radio station, KNX LA and popular podcasts.
With two doctorates, Dr. Pearson is an accountability expert who is trusted by the news media, e.g., Forbes, Fast Company, Newsweek, Fox News, Fox News Business, The Wrap, and the New York Post, to name a few, to advise on and explain issues involving the law, implicit bias, investigations, corruption, and organizational culture. She is quoted as a thought leader by organizations like iSight, Lattice, and Builtin, in the areas of ethics, organizational culture, and disabilities.
Dr. Pearson was a trial and appellate l… Read More
Quint
Maura Quint is the Campaign and acting Comms Director for Americans for Tax Fairness, an organization that seeks economic justice for all. She is also a comedy writer and contributor to publications such as The Onion, the New Yorker and McSweeney's.
Creator of Vote Heaux™ civic engagement initiative
Kellee Knighten Hough is an intellectual interrogator, defiant debater, and champion of common sense. A native Louisianian & HBCU graduate, she is very Southern, very Black, very much her mother's child, and very proud to be each of those things.
Kellee graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana with a degree in Biology PreMed, but decided to explore the path of performing arts instead of medical school (she maintains that the medical field is still in her back pocket as a Plan B). She auditioned and was accepted into the American Musical & Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in Manhattan, completed her post graduate work there in 15 months, and was performing on a National Tour three weeks after she graduated. Over the past two decades she has performed on stages all across North America, most notably earning a Helen Hayes Award nomination of Outstanding Supporting Actress for her role in the historic Ford's Theatre presentation of "The Civil War."
Kellee has had an appetite for digesting American politics from a very young age, which she attributes to her grandmother. Their daily routine of having coffee & reading the paper planted a seed of civic curiosity that blossomed into full-flowered civic duty. She knows there are many moving parts to our legislature & democracy, but the most important component is the right to vote. After the 2016 presidential election, she realized just how dire the state of American voter participation was. The colorful, spirited political diatribes she posted for years on social media (which als… Read More
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