MaPo Kinnord grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.  She received her first training in ceramics through Cleveland’s Quaker-founded alternative high school, the School on Magnolia.  She apprenticed with several production potters before receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art in 1984.  She received a Masters of Fine Art degree from Ohio State University in 1994,  Arriving in New Orleans in 1995, she now serves as a Professor of Art at Xavier University.  A well-respected educator, Kinnord has taught workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and The Penland School of Craft in North Carolina as well as the Kambe no Sato Arts Center in Matsue, Japan.  She has researched the traditional and contemporary art of Ghana and has produced video documentation of the traditional pottery, kiln building and ceramic architecture of Northern Ghana, West Africa.