Meet Jonathan Helton, Our Excellent SV Team Policy Debate Coach

Jonathan Helton is a former member of Iron Sharpening Iron and Ambassadors Speech and Debate Clubs. He competed in Stoa for three years (2015-2018) in Team Policy, Parliamentary, Lincoln-Douglas, and Speech events. In his time in Stoa, he placed first in TP four times, first in Parli once, and also won several Speech events, qualifying for Stoa's National Invitational Tournament of Champions, NITOC, twice in, Parli, and Speech. He continued debating in college, placing second at Team IPDA Nationals in 2021.

Jonathan graduated with honors from Freed-Hardeman University in May 2022 with a degree in Law and Politics. He currently works as a policy researcher with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, GRIH, where he has written about one of his old high school TP debate cases, a federal maritime law known as the Jones Act. He also covers housing, tax, healthcare, transportation, and other issues for GRIH. Jonathan works mostly remotely with GRIH, travelling to Hawaii occasionally to continue his work there. In this work, he has sharpened his research, writing, and presentation skills--all of which speech and debate helped foster. Thus his work also builds and strengthens his knowledge and understanding of these important skills as a debate coach.