Michael Brown is senior advisor and co-founder of City Year, an education nonprofit that mobilizes idealistic young people for a year of service in systemically under-resourced schools and promotes the concept of voluntary national service as means of building a stronger democracy. Michael led City Year for 30 years, including 13 as CEO.

This year, 3,000 City Year AmeriCorps members are serving as student success coaches in 350 schools in 29 U.S. cities, helping to increase the nation’s high school graduate rate. City Year also has affiliates in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

City Year served as an inspiration for AmeriCorps, the federal initiative through which more than one million Americans have served their country. City Year has 32,000 alumni who have contributed more than 54 million hours of service and earned access to more than $150 million in college scholarships through the AmeriCorps National Service Trust.

For his work developing City Year and advancing the national service movement, Michael has been awarded the Reebok Human Rights Award, Independent Sector’s John W. Gardner Leadership Award and has been named one of America’s Best Leaders by US News & World Report as well as an Executive of the Year and member of The Power and Influence Top 50 by The NonProfit Times.

Michael is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He currently serves as the president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers. Prior to co-founding City Year, Michael served as a legislative assistant to then Congressman Leon Panetta and as a clerk for Federal Judge Stephen Breyer.