Dorothy Stoneman

Biography

Dorothy Stoneman is the founder and board chair of the first YouthBuild program, started in 1978 and still operating in East Harlem. She created and led YouthBuild USA from 1988 through 2016 to spread this program throughout the nation and internationally with public funds and fidelity to the program philosophy and design. There are now 260 YouthBuild programs in the US and 80 in 21 other countries. Over 200,000 YouthBuild students have built over 35,000 units of affordable housing in their communities while earning their High School Equivalency diploma.

Stoneman is currently the assistant to the director for Opportunity Youth United (www.OYUnited.org) a multi-racial movement of low-income young adults and their allies working to diminish poverty and increase opportunity in America. They have produced a broad policy agenda and organized Community Action Teams in 20 communities.

Stoneman graduated from Harvard University in 1963 and joined the Civil Rights Movement. She lived and worked in Harlem for the next 24 years, in the Public Schools, at the parent-controlled East Harlem Block Schools, and with the Youth Action Program empowering young adults to create community development projects of their own design.

She received the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, John Gardner Leadership Award, Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Harvard Call to Service Award, and the Boston “Woke White Woman” award. In 2018 she contributed to “Healing Our Divided Society,” a book tracking the 50 years since the Kerner Commission Report. This would be a good read for anyone interested in ending poverty and racism in the United States.