About Chorus

With backgrounds in journalism, state and local government, and political campaigns, Chorus co-founders Janel Lacy and Kelli Gauthier are deeply passionate about communicating with a purpose. Much of their recent work with charter public schools, education advocacy, and nonprofit community service providers has provided the opportunity to communicate with and on behalf of diverse communities in Tennessee and nationally. Together, Janel and Kelli bring more than three decades of communications experience.

Janel spent a large portion of her early career developing and executing communications strategies for former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, starting with his first campaign for mayor in 2007. During her seven years in the Mayor’s Office, she helped spearhead the communications involved in the successful passage of major development projects such as the Music City Center and Ascend Amphitheater. She led the highly-lauded media and public information response to the devastating city-wide floods in May 2010, and she managed major public initiatives like Mayor Dean’s Walk 100 Miles campaign featured on the HBO documentary series Weight of the Nation. Janel left the Mayor’s Office in 2014 when she was recruited to lead the communications and family relations departments for Metro Nashville Public Schools. She oversaw a 21-person team and managed an annual budget over $2 million. During her tenure with MNPS, she restructured both departments to better serve families and staff. She created effective community engagement processes for issues like school rezonings, carved out a dedicated internal communications team to service the district’s 10,000 employees, and designed and implemented a family-focused service model for the district’s call center. Janel began her career as a journalist, covering growth and development, banking, finance and residential real estate for the Nashville Business Journal. 

Kelli served as the communications director for the Tennessee Department of Education, where she helped build communications campaigns advocating for increased accountability for schools and teachers, greater choice for parents, and higher standards and better assessments for students, in an effort to close achievement gaps for historically underserved students. Kelli also served as a member of department’s leadership team, a 20-person group making policy and management decisions for a state agency with a staff of 1,300. That team led Tennessee to the largest academic improvement of any state, as measured by the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Kelli also led communications for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, where she created communications resources and best practices for 15 member states, representing more than 7 million students nationwide. As an independent consultant, her clients have included the Broad Center, the Council for Chief State School Officers, Educators for Excellence, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Kelli began her career as a journalist, spending five years covering public education and state and local policy for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Learn more about what we do by reading our services page.

Janel Lacy