Born and raised in Senegal (West Africa), Agnès Tounkara, studied Economics in France and moved to the US for family reasons 22 years ago. Ever since, her career path has been driven by her passion for French and Francophone cultures.
At the Alliance Française of Boston, she led the Education Department and helped launch one of the first Heritage Language Programs in Boston serving a large Haitian community in several elementary schools in the Boston area.
She then moved to New York and joined the French American School of New York where she oversaw the extracurricular activities, promoting the French language through many programs to parents but also to the Westchester community at large.
She is now the program officer of the French Heritage Language Program (FHLP), a program of the cultural services of the French Embassy. By
providing free language programs in public schools and community centers across the US, the FHLP is helping francophone immigrants and young Americans with francophone background maintain their
linguistic and cultural heritage and leverage their linguistic skills, through educational and cultural programs.
As a francophone parent raising children in the US, Agnès is extremely excited about her most recent role as coordinator of the French Heritage Language Program (FHLP) and looks forward to strengthening and growing a program which is very close to her heart.
Agnes is passionate about equity, inclusion and culturally responsive-sustaining education and a fierce advocate for these sometimes « invisible » French speakers . She is the French language representative at the National Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools and a member of the Advisory Board of CALEC (Center for the Advancement of Languages, Education and Communities) and Francophonia.