Dear All,
The Empowering Afghan Girls and Young Women Speech Competition 2026, organized in partnership with Afghans for Progressive Thinking (APT), provides Afghan girls and young women with a platform to share their perspectives and speak about social issues they care about.
It is our pleasure to introduce the second panel of judges for our speech competition. Our judges come from all around the globe consisting of prominent Afghan changemakers, essay judges, debate coaches, teachers, and experienced debaters.
1. Dr. Jamie Brown
Dr. Brown is a SSIS leading debate coach who has experience judging Public Forum Debate, World Schools Debate, and speech events in Vietnam and abroad. She has served as a final round panelist judge at the Taiwan Speech and Debate Invitational and a standby judge for the final round of the NSDA’s National Speech and Debate Tournament. With over 5 years of experience, she is one of the leading debate coaches in all of Vietnam.
Keerti has been on Team Canada Debate 2025-2026 and 2026-2027. He has won or top spoke 6 major North American tournaments of which include winning the Harvard World Schools Tournament 2026, organized by the Harvard College Debating Union, and being the top ranked debater at the Canadian Nationals 2026.
About Team Canada Debate:
– 5x World Champions of the WSDC; most recent win: 2026 in Kenya
– 4x World Runners-up
We would like to express our gratitude to all our judges for their continued support in this competition.
Warm regards,
Empowering Afghan Girls & Young Women Through Debate
(An initiative of Vietnam Public Forum Academy)
and Afghans for Progressive Thinking (APT)
