Dorothy Stoneman is the founder and former CEO of YouthBuild USA, Inc. (now namedYouthBuild Global). Stoneman graduated from Harvard University in 1963, joined the CivilRights Movement, lived and worked in Harlem for the next 24 years during which she was aHead Start teacher, Executive Director of the parent-controlled East Harlem Block Schools, and director of the Youth Action Program. In collaboration with teenagers in East Harlem she started the first YouthBuild program in 1978 when the teenagers said they wanted to hire the teenagers to rebuild the abandoned buildings to create housing for the homeless. They did it successfully, overcoming many challenges.

In 1984 they won City funds to replicate it around New York City. In the late 1980’s private philanthropy supported replication in 20 cities around the country, after which Stoneman organized a national YouthBuild Coalition which won federal authorizing legislation forYouthBuild in 1992, championed by Senator John Kerry. Bi-partisan support has resulted inannual appropriations for YouthBuild ever since. Over 200,000 low-income YouthBuild students who had left high school without a diploma have built over 35,000 units of affordable housing in 260 communities in the USA while working toward their High School Equivalency diplomas and learning leadership skills. Many YouthBuild graduates are now leading their own non-profits or running for office. Most YouthBuild students have earned AmeriCorps scholarships through their service building affordable housing. Stoneman has been a lifelong advocate forNational Service, with special focus on opportunities for low-income residents to give service to their communities.

Among other honors over time, Stoneman has received the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, John Gardner Leadership Award, Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Harvard Call toService Award, and America’s Promise Award.

Stoneman and a group of young leaders led by a YouthBuild graduate who is now the CEO of the Quality Life Center in Southeast Florida are launching a new initiative called Youth-led Community Solutions (YCS) to provide support for teenagers in low-income neighborhoods to create significant new community improvement projects of their own design, in the same way the teens in East Harlem first conceived of and created YouthBuild with adult support.