Our Leadership Team
Amy Quilter, Founder, President
Amy's career began as a pharmacist in Upstate New York. After a move overseas, another move back to the states to Athens, GA, and another to Seattle in 2016, she stopped practicing and spent most of her time taking care of her three busy boys, making friends and creating a home in new places. In 2019, with her boys more independent she began working with local nonprofit that gave free tennis lessons, a sport she was very passionate about. When the pandemic hit soon after, she poured herself into that small program, which like many programs shifted into offering all kinds of support over that time. She realized that the mentorship was what she enjoyed most about coaching.
That experience and enthusiasm, her insights as a parent and from relocating, her willingness to learn, along with help she received from professionals in fields like philanthropy, coaching, education, and business gave her the tools that she needed to start Rally Club Seattle!
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Amy is thrilled to be working with others as passionate as she is! Team Rally Club Seattle is always thinking of ways to improve upon the model and Amy would love to hear from you!
Amy Knobbs, Co-Founder, Executive Director
Working with kids makes Amy happy. She likes talking with them, helping them understand something better and listening to how they understand the world. Having volunteered almost daily for 6 years at her children’s elementary school and in various roles at the PTA, the covid shutdown made it clear how much she missed in-person interactions with students.
When the opportunity arose to help start Rally Club Seattle, she was thrilled. With 2 children in middle school, she was excited to be able to work with that age group. Middle schoolers are poised for enormous personal growth: their ideas are less rigid than high schoolers but their ability to reason is far better than elementary students.
Throughout her past, Amy has enjoyed projects that require patience, persistence, and optimism for success. In addition to volunteering at the elementary school, Amy volunteered teaching ESL and worked as a database developer. These projects were gratifying, but Rally Club Seattle surpasses them all.
Andrea Duys, Co-Founder, Treasurer
Andrea moved to Seattle from New Hampshire in 2013 to conduct psychology research at University of Washington. Her area of focus was how stress impacts the development of youth between ages 8-18. Through her work, she spent significant time supporting the youth and families she worked with, evolving into a mentorship role. She loved getting to know people from all kinds of backgrounds and walks of life. Currently she works at Amazon as a Program Manager in recruiting and career development.
When Andrea heard the idea for Rally Club she was immediately inspired. She is passionate about how mentorship improves outcomes for at-risk youth, as well as how rich of an experience it can be for a mentor. As a co-founder she has used her research experience to shape and improve programming and her human resources experience to recruit, train, and retain the best volunteers, the key to a quality mentorship program!
Andrea volunteers weekly as a mentor and enjoys helping the kids achieve their academic goals as well as navigate the social-emotional challenges of middle school life. She is very popular with the kids, known for getting the best snacks and her skills at listening and validating!