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 ABOUT KANKEE BRIEFS  

Money should never be the reason why someone should be bad at debate - increasingly, the high school debate community has seen a "pay-to-win" model with quality coaching and briefs, costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars per year. Similar to education, lower income students are put an inherent disadvantage even if money isn't always correlated with competitive success.

 

Because of this, Kankee Briefs strives to make it easier for everyone to debate regardless of financial means. Since 2019, Kankee Briefs has continually produced free briefs to supplement debaters' personal research; helping  smaller schools have an equal jumping off point as more established debate programs.

 

Unlike other debate companies, our briefs will always be freely available at no cost. If you appreciate our briefs, please support Kankee Briefs on Patreon so we can continue to improve the quality of Kankee Briefs.

If you wish to be notified whenever we release new LD briefs, please submit your email at the Google Form linked here.

About: Welcome

 OUR VOLUNTEERS 

About: Text

If you want to be listed alongside our other volunteers, please submit your information to the Volunteer Interest Google Form linked here.

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Brett Boelkens

Director of Research and Publishing

Brett is the director and founder of Kankee Briefs. He is a graduate from the University of Nevada, Las-Vegas (UNLV) department of political science and was an assistant LD coach at Cogito Debate from 2022-2024, privately coaching for LD and British Parliamentary Debate.

 

He is a former member of the UNLV Policy Debate Team, reaching JV finals of the American Debate Association National Tournament. He is the former Informative Speaking Captain at Northwest Career and Technical Academy and was the 3rd Best Policy Debate Team at the Nevada State Speech and Debate Championship. Brett is the lead programmer for AHK debate software for Kankee Briefs.

About: Meet The Team

Other Volunteers

Melissa Khadivi, Card Cutter

Melissa has volunteered with Kankee Briefs since 2025. She serves as Co-President of the St. Andrew's Speech and Debate Team and has advanced to the LD semifinals at the NCFL Grand National Tournament and to double octofinals at the Harvard Speech and Debate Tournament. In Policy Debate, she was the 2024–2025 MHSAA State Champion and an NCFL octafinalist. She is passionate about promoting equity in speech and debate and hopes her work with Kankee Briefs helps make the activity more accessible and fair for all competitors. 

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Other Active Volunteers

  • ​​Abhay Menil

  • Abhiram Vellanki

  • Adee Niljikar

  • Alex Neumann 

  • Chance Hudson

  • Jeremiah Hawley

  • Kimberly Nguyen

  • Melissa Khadivi

  • Ruy Liao

  • Shreeya Ram

  • Vanessa Xu

  • Winston Rocque

  • Melvin Ordoñez

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Previous Volunteers

  • Sreemanth T

  • Aiden

  • Yuncong "Evan" Liu

  • Neil Marwah

  • Kallen Zhou

  • Daniel Romero

  • Cyris Lim

  • George Shubitidze

  • Arnav Dham

  • Irene Kim

  • Ayesha Hamid

  • Azzy Xiang

  • Jayden Sampat

  • Aalekh Arapalli

  • Skanda (Skan) Vasishta

  • Emmalee Layton

  • Will Spencer

  • Magnolia (Maggie) Matzen

  • Samuel Nuebel

  • Diya Subramanian

  • Austen Richardson

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