Savannah Courtner, Board President
Social Work Specialist, Clark County School District
Vinetta De La Cruz, Board Treasurer
Senior Vice President, Commercial Banking, MidFirst Bank
Jamie Clark, Board Secretary
Attorney, Fisher Phillips
Seth Wongsovit, Board Member
Technical Assistance Advisor, Nevada Grant Lab
Mike Kamer, Board Member (Ex Officio)
Executive Director, Project REAL
Please direct all board-related mail to our office
Project REAL c/o Kamer, Zucker, & Abbott
6325 S. Jones Blvd. #300
Las Vegas, NV 89118
Project REAL’s Executive Director Mike Kamer has been serving the mission of Project REAL since 2016. Mike’s 10+ years of experience in program development & management have allowed Project REAL to significantly increase the number of students we serve and the number of tools available to serve them with.
Mike work began with Project REAL in March 2016, when he was hired as our Program Director. After spending the first three months learning Project REAL’s offerings while finishing out the school year, he spent his first summer with us developing our organization’s current model, the Sequential Education Program. This allowed the organization to more effectively serve students by creating multi-year planned interactions with them, increasing the likelihood that students would have at least one Project REAL experience each year. This approach – combined with a program redesign that worked to add ‘field trip like memories’ to every Project REAL experience students have – has led to our work having long-term impacts on student behavior, and increased their academic performance in the civics education topics we provide lessons for.
In his free time, Mike volunteers throughout the community, mentors our past employees and interns, and leads Nevada Nonprofit Network and it’s Nerdy Nonprofit Nights – a social group for nonprofit professionals in Southern Nevada that aims to increase collaboration among our regions pubic service organizations.
Corporations, government agencies, and other nonprofits have all seen the value of our work and rose to the challenge of ensuring Project REAL continues to serve the students of Nevada. We acknowledge and are grateful for these organizations for the grants and donations they provide to help make our work possible. We are also fortunate enough to have the support of key philanthropic individuals without whom we’d be unable to continue serving Nevada’s students. We’d like to take a moment to thank some of those organizations and individuals now.
Premier Sponsors & Donors
Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant
US District Court, District of Nevada’s Attorney Admissions’ Fund
Nevada Bar Foundation
Select Sponsors & Donors
KJS Family Foundation
The National Judicial College
Essential Sponsors & Donors
The Terri & Roland Sturm Family Foundation
Sponsors
Speedway Children’s’ Charities
Academic Coaching Services & Dawson College Bound
University of Nevada, Reno – PIGP / PACK Internship Program
Benefactors
Greenberg Traurig
Kamer, Zucker, & Abbott
Supporters
Nancy Allf, Darryl Alterwitz, Jinx Beachler, Edward M. Bernstein, Michael Bonner,
Melissa Brown, Dennis Bursa, Candice Carlyon, David Chesnoff, Patricia Conye,
Andrew Craner, Joseph Elterman, Diane Fearon, Fran Fine, Phil Friedburg,
Christian Gabroy, Monica Garin, Jeff Grindley, Gregory Hafen, Kathleen & Randall Jones,
Gregg & Helen Kamer, Ed Kanin, Zachary Larson, Kathleen Paustian, Cary Colt Payne,
James Pisanelli, Calvin Siemer, Chuck & Theresa Short, Max Spilka, Phil Varriccio, and Ken Woloson
Based in Las Vegas, our Regional Coordinator for Southern Nevada is responsible for nearly all program service delivery. While our Executive Director handles direct service to Clark County’s urban core and surrounding rural communities, our Regional Coordinator takes on all other service needs throughout Southern Nevada, from recruiting new schools to leading our courthouse fieldtrips, REALReady classroom presentations, and relationship violence prevention experiences.
Our Northern Nevada office is staffed by a rotating team of interns provided by the University of Nevada, Reno who occasionally are kept on as part-time employees. This team is responsible for ensuring Project REAL provides continuous service in the northern parts of Nevada, including our REALReady presentations and courthouse fieldtrips. They also regularly make contributions to our ‘additional content’ law blogs.
Project REAL always welcomes inquiries about traditional volunteer opportunities, however the majority of volunteer hours served with us are performed by interns, teachers, and law-professionals. We would like to take a moment to highlight the unique and invaluable ways these groups serve Nevada’s children through Project REAL.
The teachers who volunteer to bring our materials and experiences into their classrooms are essential to our success. Principals and school administrators do contact us with requests for our services (and we gladly respond to those requests), however the majority of our services are delivered to students by the teachers who took the initiative to bring Project REAL into their classrooms.
Lawyers, Judges, Clerks, and Law Officers…. Teachers are 45% responsible for Project REAL’s success, and people in these and similar positions make up another 45% (that leaves 10% of the lifting for us to do).
Officers are not just responsible for co-teaching our materials about laws and the consequences of breaking them to students, they also take on the challenge of winning over the students’ hearts and minds during difficult times in our nation.
The many judges, lawyers, and courthouse staff who allow us to bring up to 90 students into Nevada’s courthouses nearly every day of the week are the only reasons our field trips are so invaluably interactive – otherwise these trips would just be tours of empty buildings were it not for them. Their volunteerism goes well beyond the passive allowance of our presence of course – most of these volunteers go above and beyond, taking time out of their day to speak with the students and answer their questions. They allow our field trips in their courts, they provide the opportunities for us to give those trips, and best of all, they greatly improve upon the experiences we offer.
Our organization has the benefit of hosting a wide-range of interns, all of whom have make significant contributions to our work. Interns help to improve the ways our fieldtrips run, contributed to new activities we’ve developed, created administrative tools that have allowed us to make notable gains in our efficacy, and much more. When you see the credits pages in our printed materials, you can get a sense of just how much impact these amazing individuals create during their time at Project REAL.
Project REAL has numerous needs that can be addressed by individuals in the community joining us as volunteers. Our volunteer program is currently ‘under construction’, so for now those opportunities are on hold. If you are interested in joining our program, EMAIL US HERE and we will notify you as soon as our program begins onboarding new volunteers.
In the first fifteen years of service, the majority of our work took place in the classroom. Thanks to program expansions and new opportunities that developed, today our resources are in use at summer camps, afterschool programs, community centers, and even family development classes aimed at adults. We take pride in the growing list of education programs, community groups, and nonprofit partners that are taking part in our work educating and empowering the students of Nevada.
Project REAL works with students all across Nevada, and we believe it’s important for them to learn from people who understand where they’re coming from. That’s why we actively recruit team members from the same communities we serve—because when students see someone who truly “gets it,” the message lands stronger.
At the same time, we consider all applications equally. We’ve built our hiring and volunteer selection process to reduce bias and ensure decisions are based on experience, perspective, and potential—not just on traditional credentials alone. Our goal is to build a team that reflects both the diversity and the reality of the communities we serve.
If you’re committed to helping students see a better path forward—and want to help ensure we’re doing that work in a way that’s thoughtful, fair, and rooted in real-life experience—consider joining the committee that helps guide our outreach and educational approach. Details are available in the volunteer section of our website.
