The Academy Team

Lyric Kinard, Dean

Lyric Montgomery Kinard is an award winning artist, author, and educator, with a passion for sparking the creativity that she knows each of her students posses. She was recognized for her talents as the 2011 International Association of Professional Quilters Teacher of the Year and has travelled the world sharing her love of design, composition, and textile art. She is the author of the book Art + Quilt: design principles and creativity exercises and A Pocket Guide to Critique. You can read about Lyric’s art at www.LyricKinard.com.

 When Covid shut the world down Lyric used her decades of online teaching experience to her advantage and quickly pivoted to offering live Zoom workshops and lectures. Through her involvements with the Global Quilt Connection, a listing service connecting virtual teachers with the guilds who wanted to hire them, she realized there was a great need for further professional training, helping the quilt, craft, and art teachers she loves to grasp and master the technical aspects of online teaching.  And thus, The Academy for Virtual Teaching was born.

Lisa M.  Barnes, Management Support Specialist

Lisa M. Barnes is an artist, entrepreneur, and designer and teacher of jewelry, knitting, and crochet. Formerly a performing arts manager and financial client services manager, she also uses those skills to help other creative solopreneurs organize and expand their businesses.

Lisa started out as Lyric's Virtual Assistant in the Academy, but is now so much more. Due to an appropriate typo she is now nicknamed Lyric's "Vital" Assistant and handles much of the customer service, writing, and day to day administration of the Academy.

Anisa Duci, Social Media Manager

Anisa has been a certified social media manager for seven years,  doing freelance work for several international companies. We were very lucky to find her. She is the perfect person to pay attention to detail and research what our business needs. She works for both the AVT and the Global Quilt Connection, creating and managing our Facebook and Instagram accounts.