Draft:Elizabeth Keyton

Elizabeth Keyton (born August 28, 1988) is an American teacher who focuses on Malayalam literacy and education. She has been working as an English teacher since 2009. She started learning Malayalam soon after meeting her husband in 2017. After that she started an online persona called Elikutty, creating educational resources in Malayalam.

Biography
Elizabeth was born to Christopher Keyton and Katherine Richards in Anchorage, Alaska, USA. Graduated from Ashford University with a BA in ESL Education. She received his master's degree in educational leadership from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In 2009, she began her career as an ESL teacher, working in Korea, Texas, New York, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

Elizabeth lives in Chicago, Illinois with her husband Arjun Ullas, a science teacher and a history buff.

Activities
Looking for language resources, Elizabeth started a Malayalam-based Instagram in 2018. Using her training as an English teacher, she began creating materials from a learner's perspective and posting them online. Their content went viral in 2019, resulting in a YouTube channel and reaching a larger audience. The name 'Elikutty' is a title based on the shortening of her name to Eli from Eliza, which means little mouse in Malayalam.

Starting as paper notes, she followed it up by tutorial videos, travel vlogs and creative collaborations with writer Benjamin, chef Suresh Pillai and singer Vipin Lal of Thaikkudam Bridge. Elizabeth has also presented social issues relevant to Malayalam society, such as the distinctive range of Malayalam languages and the normalization of multicultural couples.

Beyond social media, Elizabeth has given talks on the preservation of languages and the preservation of minority languages through online platforms. She gave a talk at TEDxHanoi in 2020 about growing up in a small town and learning about the complexities of societies after moving abroad. She also asserted that social media platforms are a way to preserve the culture, languages, and practices of communities that are not served by the mainstream education curriculum.