NCPZ 2021 Federal Convening Keynote Address: Geoffrey Canada
President, Harlem Children's Zone
Adaptive Leadership for Systems Change
Geoffrey Canada will explore how the emergence from COVID is an unprecedented time for organizations to scale up the work they are doing to serve children and families in communities and how there is a moral imperative to address the inequities exposed by the pandemic. A leading advocate for children and innovator in the field of education, Canada grew up in one of the most devastated communities in the United States, the South Bronx, raised by a single mother. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, and eventually went on to earn a master’s degree at Harvard University. He vowed to help children who grew up in disadvantaged circumstances to succeed through education.
Canada created the Harlem Children’s Zone, a birth-through-college network of programs that today serves more than 13,000 low-income students and families in a 97-block area of Central Harlem in New York City. In 2011, Canada was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time magazine and as one of the 50 greatest leaders by Fortune magazine in 2014. President Barack Obama created the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone model across the country.
In June 2020, Canada founded The William Julius Wilson Institute (WJW), which will serve as the national platform to help communities impacted by poverty across the country design and implement their own place-based programs —and its first initiative will be to combat the devastation of COVID-19 in the Black community.
To learn more about the National Coalition of Promise Zones 2021 Federal Convening and to REGISTER for other sessions, click the Save the Date below or go to: https://www.sacramentopromisezone.org/2021-federal-convening
