Year Up National leadership team

Gerald Chertavian
Founder and CEO
Gerald Chertavian is dedicated to closing the Opportunity Divide that exists in our nation. Determined to make his vision a reality, Gerald combined his entrepreneurial skills and his passion for working with urban young adults to found Year Up in 2000. An intensive one-year training and education program that serves low-income youth ages 18-24, Year Up is providing the technical, professional and communication skills needed to empower urban young adults to make successful transitions to careers and higher education. With its annual operating budget exceeding $30M, Year Up is one of the fastest growing non-profits in the nation. It has been recognized by Fast Company and The Monitor Group as one of the top 25 organizations using business excellence to engineer social change.

Gerald’s commitment to working with urban youth spans more than 25 years. He has actively participated in the Big Brother mentoring program since 1985 and was recognized as one of New York's outstanding Big Brothers in 1989. The recipient of the 2003 Social Entrepreneurship Award by the Manhattan Institute and the 2005 Freedom House Archie R. Williams, Jr. Technology Award, Gerald has been featured in many publications, including Time Magazine, Fortune Small Business, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Boston Business Journal. In 2007, Gerald was elected as a Fellow with the Ashoka Global Fellowship of social entrepreneurs for his innovative approach to social change and as a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. In 2008, Gerald was appointed by Massachusetts’ Governor Deval Patrick to serve on the MA State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. In addition, he currently serves on the board of Bowdoin College and The Boston Foundation, and is on the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Club.

Gerald earned a B.A. in Economics, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College and an M.B.A., with honors, from Harvard Business School. He began his career on Wall Street as an officer of the Chemical Banking Corporation and then moved on to become the head of marketing at Transnational Financial Services in London. Gerald co-founded Conduit Communications in 1993 and fostered its growth to $20M in annual revenues and more than 130 employees in London, Amsterdam, New York and Boston. From 1993 to 1998, Conduit ranked as one of England’s fastest growing companies. Following the sale of Conduit to i-Cube in 1999, Gerald turned his full attention to opportunities for others.

A national model for social change, the Year Up program gives companies a cost-effective solution for recruiting entry-level employees, while providing young adults with the essential “stepladder” for success. Results are excellent with 85% of graduates placed in positions that average more than $15/hour within four months of graduation. The program will serve more than 1,000 students in 2010 with sites in Atlanta, Boston, Providence, New York City, Washington DC, San Francisco, Chicago and soon Seattle. Year Up works with more than 100 corporate partners, including AOL, Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston Medical Center, CVS/pharmacy, Digitas, Dunkin Brands, Fidelity Investments, Freddie Mac, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Partners HealthCare, and State Street Corporation.

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Alan ANDERSON
Executive Director, Chicago
Alan Anderson joined Year Up in 2010 as the Founding Executive Director of the Chicago site to continue his passion for serving young people who need access to better opportunities in our city.  Alan plans to build on the professional and educational experiences he has been so fortunate to receive and use these experiences as a catalyst for change for the young adults we serve.

Previously, Alan was the Acting Chief School Design Officer in the Chief Administrative Office for Chicago Public Schools. In this role, Alan was responsible for re-designing and aligning the school closing and opening process to impact SY12 school openings. He was also responsible for leading a city-wide education and advocacy process to inform parents and families on the performance of their school and mobilizing parent and community leaders to develop and choose the educational solutions to fix their failing school. Alan also served as the Acting Deputy CEO for Human Capital and before that as the Executive Director of the Office of School Turnaround for Chicago Public Schools. Alan has also served the district as Deputy Director of Research, Evaluation and Accountability and as a Project Manager. Alan participated in The Broad Residency in Urban Education Cohort 2006, serving his two-year Residency in Chicago Public Schools.

Before joining Chicago Public Schools, Alan worked at Motorola, Inc for nearly nine years. Most recently at Motorola, he served as Business Manager for Motorola’s Transmission Group where he was responsible for the company’s $6.5 million transmission business for the Ford Motor Company. He has previously served as design engineer, design team leader and project manager at Motorola. Alan earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  Alan has a wife, Pamela and two children, Ashley and David.

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Jay Banfield
Executive Director, San Francisco
Jay Banfield was raised in Somerville, Massachusetts. Jay moved to California in 1986 to attend Stanford University, where he met his wife Kate. They have two daughters, Grace and Dray, and a son, Aidan.

After playing baseball in Europe, Jay began his career as a business development manager at Oracle Corporation in Washington, DC. While at Oracle, he built corporate volunteer programs and participated in the launch of the Clinton Administration's AmeriCorps program, thereby prompting a return to the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a Master in Public Policy (MPP) degree.

Jay has worked on local, state and national political campaigns and has served in both the legislative and executive branches of government. Jay was appointed the Assistant Treasurer for the City and County of San Francisco in 1999 where he spearheaded a national award-winning e-government initiative. He was awarded the city's Public Managerial Leadership Award in 2001 and later was appointed an Assistant General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. For several years Jay served as an adjunct faculty member at the Edward S. Ageno School of Business at Golden Gate University.

In the fall of 2005, Jay moved to the non-profit sector when he became the Executive Director of the San Francisco Parks Trust. Now serving on the board of the San Francisco Parks Trust, he moved on to launch the San Francisco Bay Area office of Year Up. In addition to his work as Executive Director at Year Up, Jay remains an active member of the community. Trained as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), Jay has been on the board of San Francisco CASA for five years, serving one term as co-chair of the board. Jay also serves as a trustee at the San Francisco Friends School and coach of numerous youth athletic teams.

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Shawn Jacqueline Bohen
National Director for Strategic Growth and Impact
Shawn Jacqueline Bohen is the first National Director of Strategic Growth and Impact at the innovative social enterprise organization Year Up, Inc., a one-year intensive workforce development program serving urban young adults.  Over the last 25 years, Shawn has made a career as a collaborative strategist, creating, growing, and strategically managing mission-driven organizations. Shawn is recognized for her ability to turn great ideas into dynamic, diversely-staffed, fiscally-viable entities.  She has had responsibility for administration, governance, fundraising, communications, constituency engagement, curriculum planning, and research, as well as for managing partnerships with community-based organizations and individuals, donors and collaborators.

Prior to Year Up, Shawn spent more than a decade working at Harvard University in a series of leadership roles facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle some of society’s most challenging and interesting social, political and economic dilemmas. Partnering with academic colleagues, Shawn led the strategic evolution of four university-wide start-ups, including the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at the John F. Kennedy School, the university-wide Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative, and the Harvard Medical School Division on Addictions. In her last post at Harvard, Shawn served as Assistant Provost, co-creating and co-leading the first institution-wide Office for Faculty Development and Diversity committed to transforming Harvard's approach to finding, developing and promoting a diverse, world-class faculty. Earlier in her career, Shawn worked as an actress and as a political grassroots organizer.

Shawn holds an M.B.A. from Babson Graduate School of Management and a B.A. in Theatre Arts and English from the University of Minnesota.  Shawn has two elementary school-aged children.  She currently serves as an advisor to Partners in Health and the Division of Global Health and Human Rights at Massachusetts General Hospital, and she is on the Board of Global Action Network-NET.

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TYNESIA BOYEA ROBINSON
Executive Director, National Capital Region
Tynesia Boyea Robinson joined Year Up in 2004 to foster her commitment to disadvantaged youth through the launch of the National Capital Region site. Her wide range of experience in IT, six sigma and international business development made her a valuable asset to the Year Up team, and has resulted in growth from a class of 22 students and 8 corporate partners in 2006 to a class of close to 500 students and over 300 corporate partners in 2009. She also created a performance assessment tool for Year Up which was recognized by The Bridgespan Group as an industry best practice.

Prior to joining Year Up, Tynesia held leadership roles in several business units at General Electric. In this role, she was responsible for integrating processes, policies, and over 200 employees into GE Mortgage Insurance. Earlier in her career, she led several eBusiness and process improvement projects at GE Transportation Systems. In addition to her work responsibilities, Tynesia was the community service chair for the GE African-American Forum and a mentor to young adults through various community and faith-based groups.

Tynesia received her MBA from Harvard Business school, where she won the Harvard Student Association MBA Award, was the lead in their annual musical Satire, and was a founding member of the HBS student group BPBA (Business Plan for Black America) commissioned by the NAACP to improve the education, economics, and opportunities for disadvantaged African-Americans. She holds a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University.

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Michael brownstein
National Director of Academics and Program
Michael comes to Year Up with extensive experience working collaboratively with innovative educators and forward-thinking community leaders to create self-sustaining educational programs designed to improve inner-city students' transition from high school to post-secondary education and successful careers. Among these programs, he co-founded a "last chance" urban public high school for at-risk students, facilitated cross-disciplinary and multi-site initiatives in eleven urban school districts along the Eastern seaboard that led to improved student outcomes, and co-created three public-private partnerships that supported K-12 literacy. Two of these partnership models were replicated in cities across the country, and the third was recognized by the United States Department of Labor as an exemplary summer youth development program. Michael earned a B.A. in English from Kenyon College, an M.B.A. from Syracuse University, and an Ed.M. from Teachers College, Columbia University.

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Kweku forstall
Executive Director, Atlanta
In July 2008 Kweku D. Forstall began serving as the start-up Executive Director of Year Up Atlanta.  From 2000 to 2008 he served as the first Executive Director of Project GRAD Atlanta, Inc., a public-private school reform initiative designed to increase the number of students from inner-city, economically disadvantaged communities graduating from both high school and college.  Prior to Project GRAD Atlanta, Kweku was a Vice President for Community Investments for the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, responsible for assuring maximum impact of donor dollars.  He also served as the first Director of the Office of Community Service at Morehouse College, responsible for helping to instill in students and other members of the Morehouse College community a lifelong commitment to serving others.   Kweku began his career in public service in 1985 as an Attorney with Atlanta Legal Aid Society, where for seven and a half years he represented indigent clients in civil cases, while also managing the office serving Dekalb and Gwinnett county residents.  Kweku was a founding board member of Foreverfamily (formerly Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers), Our Family Table Foundation, and the Inner Strength Mentoring program. He serves as a mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program and as a member of the Oglethorpe University Center for Civic Engagement Local Board, among others. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. Kweku and his wife Adrienne have three daughters – nineteen year old twins and a fifteen year old.

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Meghan Hughes
Executive Director, Providence
Meghan joined the Providence Team as its Executive Director in August of 2009. Meghan’s commitment to public service is exemplified by her work in urban neighborhoods in New Haven in the mid-eighties, where she directed the Yale/New Haven tutoring program and worked as a counselor with the Coordinating Committee for Children in Crisis, a private non-profit based in that city. In the late eighties, Meghan was the co-director of the Brownstone School in the Bronx, a non-profit education program for homeless children, and she spent the next decade volunteering with her husband as a fundraiser and an advocate for the Boy Scouts of New York, most particularly as a mentor for two brothers in Harlem. Meghan moved with her family to Providence in 1999, and her community work there has included extensive gun control efforts, and volunteering for several political campaigns.

Meghan spent the last fifteen years in university academia, most recently at Tufts University where she taught Renaissance art history for the last six years. While there Meghan was proud to receive the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award and to contribute to new curriculum development and a partnership with Northeastern University. Prior to her academic career, Meghan was an assistant vice president for four years at Christie’s Auction house where she headed the American Folk Art department. Meghan currently serves on the Board of the RISD Museum of Art, heading the education committee, and has been active at her children’s schools with strategic planning and diversity work. She was raised in Indianapolis and is the proud graduate of its public school system. Meghan graduated magna cum laude from Yale and holds a PhD from New York University. Meghan and her husband Kimball have three children, Walker, Veta, and Jamey.

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William Lehman
National Site Director
Bill was born in Iowa City, Iowa. He received a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Iowa and a Masters Degree from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in North Carolina. He also was awarded the Purple Heart during his service in Viet Nam with the United States Marine Corps. He and his wife Sandra have two children, Paula and Joshua.

After a short stint in the telecommunications industry, Bill joined the management and technology consulting practice of Price Waterhouse (later PricewaterhouseCoopers) where he enjoyed a twenty-seven-year career, twenty-one of these as a Partner. His clients included major manufacturing, healthcare and financial services companies in the U.S. and around the Globe. He started, led and grew several new practices for the Firm, and was a long-time member of the leadership teams which guided strategy, investment and new-product/service development priorities for various industries and practice groups. Bill retired from PwC in 2002, and spent another five years with the Financial Services consulting practice of BearingPoint, Inc. He most recently was a Principal Advisor with the TechPar Group, which assists with product, market and operational strategies for start-up technology companies, as well as larger technology companies who are investigating new product or solution domains.

Bill began his relationship with Year Up as a local board member for the New York City site, where he was particularly active in big group sessions, internship sales and mentoring. Outside of Year Up, he is an active volunteer in assisting training inner-city high school students on job search processes, and on the Social Action Committee of Temple Shaaray Tefila. He worked for many years as a volunteer coach and youth mentor for the Yorkville Youth Council baseball league in New York City. He also served on the Alumni Council of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

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SUE MEEHAN
Chief Operating Officer
Sue Meehan joined Year Up in 2004 as the Director of Finance, Operations and Student Services.  Early in her tenure, Sue was charged with developing Year Up’s infrastructure in a range of critical areas including human resources and talent development, program quality, finance, and information technology.  After launching Year Up’s national headquarters in 2007, Sue formally assumed the role of Chief Operating Officer, where she currently manages organization-wide operations and planning.
 
Sue comes to Year Up with extensive operational and organizational development experience. As Chief Operating Officer of Share Group, Inc, Sue helped build the premier telefundraising firm for progressive Non Profits, growing the company from start-up to 500 employees and $20 million in sales in 10 years. Before joining Share, Sue was a budget director for the Dukakis-Bentsen Presidential Campaign, a campaign manager for a Massachusetts State Representative race, and an organizer for the Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts. Sue started her career as an Admissions and Financial Aid Officer for Harvard College. She holds a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College.

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LISETTE NIEVES
Executive Director, New York City
Lisette Nieves comes to Year Up with great experience in community and youth development, making her a wonderful asset to its establishment and growth in New York City. Prior to Year Up, Lisette was a consultant to nonprofit organizations in strategic planning, program development and management and an instructor in Graduate Studies of Public Administration at Brooklyn College. She is the former Chief of the Staff for the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD). Prior to DYCD, Lisette was the Director for Special Projects at the After-school Corporation where she designed forums for superintendents and principals, as well as piloted youth mentoring programs in the local high schools. Lisette has also worked at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, where she served as Director of Grants Management. Lisette also served as a Senior Program Officer for the Corporation for National Service, overseeing AmeriCorps programs in the Northeast. Her previous board experience includes being a national board member for Jumpstart, a Trustee of her alma mater Brooklyn College and the Board Chair of the East Harlem Block Schools. Lisette is also a Truman Scholar from 1990, Rhodes Scholar from 1992 and a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton.

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Casey Recupero
Executive Director, Boston
Casey Recupero is Executive Director of Year Up Boston and a member of Year Up’s national leadership team. Under Casey’s leadership, Year Up Boston has expanded by 30% and deepened its impact on the Opportunity Divide facing young people in Boston. Year Up Boston currently serves 280 young adults annually, introducing each one to an internship at one of Year Up Boston’s 50 corporate partners such as State Street, Bank of America, Partners HealthCare, Children’s Hospital, Microsoft, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. As of January 2010, there are nearly 900 Year Up Alumni in the Boston area.

Casey joined Year Up in 2004 with a wide range of experience strengthening nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and in Africa. Casey spent more than 4 years as a Program Officer at World Education, Inc., where he designed and supported capacity building programs for grassroots organizations overseas. With a portfolio that included programs focusing on HIV/AIDS peer education for Ghanaian youth, small business development in South Africa, and education reform in Malawi, Casey has a unique perspective on the myriad challenges facing disadvantaged populations. Prior to his career in international development, Casey directed a mentoring program for first-year students at Harvard, served on the College's Board of Freshman Advisors, and collaborated on research at the Kennedy School's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

Casey has a B.A. in Anthropology and African Studies from Harvard University and is a 2007 graduate of the LeadBoston program. Casey serves on the Selection Advisory Council for the GreenLight Fund, the Boston Rising Advisory Committee, and Mayor Menino’s Success Boston Task Force.

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SANDRA STARK
National Director of Development and External Affairs
Sandy Stark has spent the majority of her career building and growing both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Most recently, Sandy served as Executive Vice President of Business Development for The First Marblehead Corporation and was one of six members of the Chairman's leadership team. First Marblehead markets private student loans to students and universities, and securitizes those loans for financial institutions. During her tenure, Sandy restructured the business model and built relationships with major consumer brands such as Monster, ING Direct, and GE Money, which contributed to significant growth in both revenue and profit.

Prior to joining First Marblehead, Sandy focused her career on entrepreneurship and education. Her consulting firm, The Masix Group, specialized in assisting entrepreneurial companies by providing practical, customized plans to address their specific challenges and growth opportunities. Recognizing the multiple hats worn by her entrepreneurial clients, Sandy also incorporated a strong educational component in the services offered by The Masix Group to ensure the entrepreneur could sustain the changes in the future.

Previously, Sandy joined Baldwin-Wallace College to create the first degree program in entrepreneurial education. As an Associate Professor in an endowed chair, Sandy created an Entrepreneurship Center that provided academic curriculum, experiential learning initiatives, and economic development programs for minority and women-owned businesses.

Sandy started her career at KeyBank. During her 20 years there, she held positions of increasing responsibility in retail and commercial banking, culminating in her role as Vice Chairman of KeyBank's Small Business Services division. In this capacity, Sandy conceived and implemented a new small business strategy that resulted in KeyBank becoming the nation's largest small business lender within a two-year period.

For nine years, Sandy served as President of the Urban Community School, an independent, ecumenical school serving 400 inner-city children. In this role she led the first capital campaign to improve and expand the school.

Sandy earned a B.A. in Accounting and an M.B.A. from Baldwin-Wallace College.

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