Alan Khazei

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1991

Alan Khazei

City Year

http://www.cityyear.org/

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

As roommates at Harvard Law School, Alan Khazei and Michael Brown spent nights discussing social problems in the US. How could there be so much disparity in a country so rich? In addition, Brown and Khazei were concerned by the racial polarization they were seeing in the nation. When they graduated in 1988, Brown and Khazei started City Year in Boston, Massachusetts.

An Action Tank for national service, City Year seeks to demonstrate, improve, and promote the concept of national service as a means of building a stronger democracy. City Year unites a diverse group of young adults, ages 17 to 24, for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. In 1993, The Clinton Administration used City Year as a model for its Americorps program and in 1994, The Timberland Company and Digital became national founding sponsors of City Year’s national corps in a tremendous act of corporate leadership.

Since inception, City Year has graduated 7,100 alumni; served over 772, 000 children; completed 10.9 million hours of service; partnered with 360 corporations and 1,140 service organizations; engaged more than 820,000 citizens in service; and launched international efforts in South Africa. City Year has established programs in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbia, SC, Columbus, Detroit, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, San Antonio, San Jose/Silicon Valley, Seattle/King County and Washington, D.C. City Year's vision is that one day, the most commonly asked question of an 18-year-old will be: "Where are you going to do your service year?"

(Note: Echoing Green supported Alan Khazei, Michael Brown and City Year in its early development, but through another grant program.)

Biography:

Alan Khazei is CEO and Founder of Be the Change Inc, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening our democracy by connecting the service and social entrepreneurship movements to policy development and advocacy. Be the Change leverages the “grasstops” and “grass roots” to build citizen movements for change. It taps the wisdom, experience, and networks of practitioners, social entrepreneurs, service alumni and leaders from all sectors, to craft bold, new post-partisan policy agendas, build coalitions, mobilize citizens, and unite Americans behind ideas that can transform our nation and create a better future for all Americans. Be the Change is the driving force behind ServiceNation, a national coalition of more than 180 organizations that reach more than 100 million Americans across the country. The goal of ServiceNation is to unite leaders from every sector of American society with thousands of citizens in a national campaign to work with the President and Congress and leaders from all sectors of society to enact a new era of voluntary service and civic engagement in America, an era in which all Americans come together to try and address our greatest and most persistent societal problems.

Alan Khazei was Co-Founder and CEO of City Year for almost twenty years, a youth service corps that helped to inspire the development of AmeriCorps, America’s federal investment in national youth service. Founded in 1988 with 50 young people in service in Boston, City Year is now a global organization operating in 19 cities in America and in Johannesburg, South Africa with an annual budget of more than $60 million. City Year annually enlists more than 1,500 young adults from all backgrounds for a demanding year of full-time community service, civic engagement and leadership development. An “action tank” for the concept of voluntary national service, City Year envisions a world in which a year of public service will be a civic rite of passage for all young adults.

Alan Khazei was appointed to the Commission on National and Community Service by President George H.W. Bush and served as a Vice-Chair from 1990-1992. He is a recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, The Caring Institute Award, and the Harvard Law School Association Outstanding Alumni Award. In 2006 he was selected by US News and World Report as one of America's 25 Best Leaders and was chosen by the Boston Globe Magazine as one of 11 Bostonians Changing the World. Time Magazine named him one of America’s top 50 leaders under 40. Alan currently serves on the Board of Directors of New Profit, Inc., Share Our Strength, and on the Advisory Board of the Partnership for Public Service and the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in the fall of 2006.

Alan is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and currently lives in Brookline, MA with his wife, daughter, and son.