Make Your Career (& Life) Make a Difference

Tuesday, April 19th, 2005 - 2:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Education and Job Skills

Rob Waldron, President and CEO, Jumpstart

In April 2002, Rob Waldron became president and CEO of Jumpstart, a national non-profit organization that recruits, trains, and pairs college students with preschool children to teach early literacy and language skills. An educational entrepreneur with critical expertise in scaling a local after-school program into a national organization, Rob has focused on continuing Jumpstart's aggressive growth, enhancing Jumpstart's impressive programmatic results, and lowering overall costs to efficiently expand the organization's outreach to children.

Jumpstart currently serves almost 8,000 children in 200 preschools and in more than 57 communities throughout America. Under Rob's leadership, the organization has nearly tripled in size in three years and has lowered its cost per child by more than 30 percent.

Jumpstart has been named one of the 20 leading social organizations in the country by Fast Company, was called one of the top 100 charities by Worth, and has been heralded as a model by Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, President George W. Bush, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, and many other dignitaries and corporate CEO's.

Before joining Jumpstart, Rob served as a Fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Prior to his fellowship, Rob served as CEO of SCORE! Learning Centers, a unit of the Washington Post Company. Under his leadership, the organization grew from 13 centers and less than $2 million in revenue to more than 150 centers nationwide with annual revenues exceeding $50 million. Before SCORE!, Rob served as vice president of Kaplan, Inc. and as an associate of Morgan Stanley, Inc.

Rob is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Northwestern University. He has served as a weekly volunteer at Covenant House and the New England Home for Little Wanderers. He is an Executive member of Young Presidents' Organization; an adviser to Vanu, Inc; and a past member of the Advisory Council on Education Statistics for the U.S. Department of Education. He has been called a "truly remarkable leader" by the Washington Post Company and been featured in many publications, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune.

Gerald Chertavian, Executive Director, Year Up

Born and raised in Lowell, MA, Gerald is living his dream of returning to Boston and leveraging his entrepreneurial skills with his passion for working with urban young adults. Gerald has a life-long commitment to working with urban youth, an interest that has spanned over 15 years. He has been an active participant in the Big Brother mentoring program since 1985. In 1989, Gerald was recognized as one of New York's outstanding Big Brothers.

Prior to founding Year Up, Gerald co-founded and ran Conduit Communications, an Internet strategy consulting firm with headquarters in London. He grew Conduit to $20MM in revenues with over 130 employees in London, Amsterdam, New York and Boston. From 1993 to 1998, Conduit ranked as one of England's fastest growing companies and sold to I-Cube in 1999. Prior to Conduit, Gerald was head of marketing at Transnational Financial Services in London, the World's leading provider of affinity credit cards. He began his career on Wall Street as an officer of the Chemical Banking Corporation. Gerald earned an M.B.A., with honors, from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College. Gerald was recently recognized by Boston Business Forward magazine as one of "Boston's 40 most promising individuals under the age of 40." He currently serves as a Trustee of Cambridge College and Bowdoin College.

Eric Schwarz, President, Citizen Schools

Eric Schwarz is President and Co-Founder of Citizen Schools. Prior to founding Citizen Schools, Eric worked for five years at City Year where he served as Vice President for Organizational Development and, later, as Executive Director of City Year Boston. Eric is a 1983 graduate of the University of Vermont and earned a Master's Degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 1997.