Teaching artists are practicing, professional artists who integrate art forms, perspectives, and a range of settings from community arts, and museums, to healthcare settings and prisons.

Academic classrooms: Integration of arts to deepen understanding, application, and cognitive growth in traditional academic classrooms.

Arts education organizations and classrooms: Dr. Elliott uses her skills as a professional artist to consult on educational practices, delivery of curriculum which aligns with national standards which include intercultural competence, and differentiated instructional strategies to ensure all members are actively engaged and supported.

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Dr. Elliott specializes in integrating trauma-informed principles and practices within communities and organizations to enable leaders, educators, and artists to nurture mental health well-being resulting in increased productivity, creative problem solving, and thriving environments. 

Trauma-informed professional development is ideal for organizations that see how external stressors such as the global pandemic or refugee migration crisis impact individuals’ quality of life and ability to thrive personally and professionally. The professional development sessions are designed to meet the specific needs of communities to ensure practices are inclusive, non-trauma inducing, or triggering, and provide strategies to mitigate the impact of trauma in organizations, classrooms, communities, and arts environments.

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As a cellist, Dr. Elliott has performed with orchestras under conductors from The Metropolitan Opera and La Scala and given recitals across the United States and Europe. She has participated in masterclasses with Janos Starker, Glen Dicterow, Gary Hoffman, and chamber music coaching with the Tokyo String Quartet.  She continues to perform with orchestras and chamber music ensembles in the United States and Europe.

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As an educator, Dr. Elliott has designed and served as head of fine arts programs for middle, high, charter, and private schools in the United States. She has taught cello and music in colleges and universities in the United States, as well as served as head of music of colleges in the United Kingdom. Kyna has a private studio where she teaches cellists of all ages and abilities and currently serves as the orchestra director at a private school in Atlanta, Georgia.  In addition, she holds the position of Orchestra Chair for independent schools in the state of Georgia governed by the Georgia Independent Schools Association (GISA).