Year Up National OFFICE
Year Up's national team provides critical support to ensure students receive the highest quality program services during their Year Up journey. Working across all sites, these headquarters staff build the strong infrastructure and efficient systems necessary to truly close the Opportunity Divide.

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 The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, BusinessWeek, Fortune Small Business, and The Christian Science Monitor. He currently serves as a Trustee of Cambridge College and Bowdoin College and is on the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Club and New Sector Alliance.

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.

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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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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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Kira Intrator
National Project Manager
Kira comes to Year Up with a breadth of experience in the international non-profit arena. Prior to Year Up, she worked in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Health Organization's Evidence for Information cluster and at Pugwash, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning NGO founded by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein to promote disarmament. Through her two-time Center for Peace and Global Citizenship scholarship, Kira created an independent volunteer project involving five months of anthropological research, translation and thesis writing in Sucre, Bolivia on a fair-trade indigenous women weavers' cooperative. In addition, she was the recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, where she performed and studied traditional vocal technique in Egypt, India and Brazil in 2005-2006. While living in Mumbai, India she also conducted a study for Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action on housing rights for single slum-dwelling women. Kira holds a BA from Haverford College in Religious Studies with a concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies.

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Shumi Jahan
Data Coordinator
Prior to joining Year Up, Shumi analyzed and reported data pertaining to over 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students at Oklahoma State University. Shumi grew up in the Southeast Asian country of Brunei before moving to United States to pursue her higher education. She brings her experience of working with data management systems along with her passion to see every young individual around the world succeed. Shumi feels privileged to be a part of Year Up and would like to inspire the creation of programs similar to Year Up in other countries of the world, especially in her birth country of Bangladesh. Shumi holds a Bachelor and Master of Science Degree in Managment Information Systems from the William S. Spears School of Business in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

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CARLOS MAESTRE
Finance Manager
Carlos joins Year Up with seven years of experience in the Finance & Accounting field, most recently with Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a nonprofit human rights organization. Prior to that, Carlos was an Accountant at the YWCA in Cambridge. Carlos also executed portfolio trades as a Reconciliation Specialist at Putnam Investments. Carlos grew up in the Dorchester area and has studied Accounting at Bunker Hill Community College.

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Diane Malcolmnson
National Director of Development
A native of Arlington, Massachusetts, Diane has spent much of her career creating and executing fundraising, marketing, communications strategies in both the private and nonprofit sectors. Diane’s career has included successful fundraising and related marketing and communications campaigns at Tufts, Columbia and Harvard Universities, Wincester Hospital, Weston School of Theology and Partners Health Care.  Her private sector experience includes a two-year stint at Ann Taylor where she improved the companies’ profitability 25% through qualitative and quantitative analyses of key business units, and re-engineering of the quality control division. At Fleet Bank as Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, Diane was a key member of the executive team which successfully completed the Bank Boston merger, directing a comprehensive employee and customer communications strategy for the largest divestiture in banking history.

Since 2001 Diane has worked with the CEO, board and staff of Outdoor Explorations, a local New England-based organization which provides free recreational opportunities for children and adults with physical and mental disabilities.  A graduate of Regis College, with an MBA and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University, Diane lives in Belmont, MA with her husband, two children and the family dog.

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TAMIKA MASON
Manager of Organizational Development
Tamika brings a wealth of managerial experience and diversity to Year-up. Raised in a military family, Tamika, has lived in multiple cities in the United States and throughout Europe and Asia. Most recently, Tamika lived in Virginia where she was a Financial Center Manager for Wachovia. Additionally, Tamika served as Operations Manager for Providence Ministries International, Inc where she developed the operational protocol and financial procedures. Prior to working with Wachovia and Providence, Tamika served as co-founder and President of one of the largest student led organizations at the University of Virginia. (“Impact”) Tamika is motivated by her deep devotion of seeing people, nonprofits, and mission driven organizations reach their full potential. Tamika holds a BS in Systems Engineering and a minor in Management Information Systems from the University of Virginia.

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SUE MEEHAN
National Director of Finance and Operations
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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CollEen o'connell
Associate Director of Finance
Colleen comes to Year Up with over 12 years of experience in audit and non-profit financial management.  She has worked with a variety of non-profit organizations, most recently at Capital City Community Centers in Rhode Island.  Colleen holds a BS in Accounting from St. Joseph’s University and a MBA in Management from Bryant University.

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DOREEN PULLER
Technical Support Specialist

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Charkie Quarcoo
Development Coordinator
In an effort to work at an organization that aligns with her passion, Charkie comes to Year Up with experience in development and a desire to help young adults recognize their potential.  

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Charkie graduated from Trinity College in 2006, with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Educational Studies.  While at Trinity College, Charkie worked in the Development Office, serving as a student representative for development functions.  Committed to helping the community around her, Charkiealso interned at family centers, working with children and young adults to help them achieve their personal and professional goals.  After graduation, she moved to Boston to work at a leadership development consulting firm organizing the facilitative leadership workshops. 

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Aaron Schutzengel
Database Project Coordinator
Aaron joined Year Up in September 2007 as Database Project Coordinator, focusing on database rollout and support.  Prior to joining Year Up, Aaron worked at the Tufts University Office of Communications, where he designed a web application to support the school's photography staff.  Aaron holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Tufts University.

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Yvette Terry
Executive Assistant to the CEO

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Susan Hiller Troen
Director of Data Systems and Operations

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Heather Wininger
Manager of People Development
Heather comes to Year Up with a broad range of human resources and social sector experience.  A former consultant at Monitor Group, she helped develop talent management systems and structures in both for-profit and and not-for-profit environments.  Additionally, she led numerous engagements and served as Client Development chair for Inpire, a volunteer-based educational consulting firm.  She is excited to be a team member of an organization that believes the way to reach your mission is to invest heavily in your people.  Heather has a BA from Dartmouth College in English and economics.

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