Alan Khazei  
Co-Founder, City Year

Alan Khazei is Co-Founder of City Year, a national youth service corps that inspired the development of AmeriCorps, the nation’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 with an annual budget of more than $40 million, enlisting more than 1,000 young adults annually for a demanding year of full-time community service, civic engagement and leadership development and providing strategic leadership for the national service movement.

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. The organization’s goals are to generate transformative community service, break down social barriers, inspire citizens to civic action, develop new leaders for the common good, improve and promote the concept of citizen service, and support social entrepreneurship. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. has written that City Year is, "A peaceful revolution against cynicism, despair and selfishness."

City Year "corps members," ages 17 to 24, conduct an annual campaign of idealism by serving full-time for one year to address pressing community needs, including serving as teachers' aides, running after school programs and school vacation camps, teaching violence and AIDS prevention, rehabilitating public housing units, and building parks and playgrounds. Corps members receive a weekly stipend and, upon graduating the program, an educational award of $4,725 from the Corporation for National Service. Since its founding in 1988, City Year has engaged more than 7,800 young people, provided more than 11.8 million hours of service to more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations, schools and community centers and to more than 840,000 children, and generated more than $28 million in post-service scholarships for the young adults who serve.

Mr. Khazei is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard College and a Cum Laude graduate of Harvard Law School. In 1991, President Bush appointed Mr. Khazei to serve on the Board of Directors of the Commission on National and Community Service. He served as Vice-Chair of the Commission until 1993. Mr. Khazei currently serves on the Board of Directors of Citizen Schools, Harvard Alumni Association, New Profit, Inc., and Share Our Strength and on the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Partnership for Public Service including participation on the Selection Committee for the U.S. News and World Report "America’s 25 Best Leaders." Alan Khazei is a recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, and The Caring Institute Award. Mr. Khazei lives in Jamaica Plain, MA, with his wife and daughter.

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