Kaplan is a philosophy PhD with years of experience in community organizing, serving in his local government, and teaching core issues in political philosophy, applied ethics, existentialism, and related topics . He became politically active in 2015, as a community organizer in Millis, Massachusetts, founding a group called Millis Public Forum. His primary aim was to promote active, informed citizenship in town. As part of this role, Kaplan organized information sessions regarding local issues, visioning exercises to help shape Millis’s future, participation in marches—including Boston’s March for Science in the spring of 2018, and more. This work in Millis gave Kaplan firsthand knowledge of the power of grassroots organizing..

It was teaching philosophy, however, which inspired Kaplan to found ACC. He discovered that he was teaching things that mattered—ethics, political theory, human nature, the meaning of life, etc.—but that students were not (and ar not) positioned to apply what they learned. This is not their fault. It is a result of a failure of various institutions: their education system, media, state, local, and federal government, and more. ACC is designed to help counteract any and all of the ill effects of these institutions, one person at a time.