Alan Khazei

Alan Khazei has pioneered ways to empower citizens to make a difference. In 1987, as a young graduate from Harvard Law School, he co-founded City Year with his friend, Michael Brown. City Year unites young adults, ages 17 to 24, from all backgrounds for an intensive year of full-time community service mentoring, tutoring, and educating children. It served as the model and inspiration for President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program and now operates in 23 communities in America and also in Johannesburg, and London.

In 2003, when AmeriCorps experienced a drastic funding cut of 80 percent, Alan joined forces with other service leaders to organize the “Save AmeriCorps” coalition, an effort that not only restored funding, but led to an increase of $100 million dollars and a fifty percent growth in the AmeriCorps program. Inspired by the Save AmeriCorps campaign, in 2007, Alan launched Be The Change, Inc., which creates bi-partisan national issue based campaigns to affect public policy and culture by organizing coalitions of nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, private sector leaders, academics, and citizens. In 2009, ServiceNation, Be The Change’s first campaign, played a key role in enacting the strongly bi-partisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act which authorized the greatest expansion of national service since the great Depression.  Be The Change launched its second official campaign, Opportunity Nation, focused on promoting opportunity, expanding social mobility and fighting poverty, in November 2011.

In 2009, Alan was a candidate in the Senate special election primary in Massachusetts. He was endorsed by the state’s leading newspaper—the Boston Globe, and also received endorsements from public leaders including General Wesley Clark, Mayor Bloomberg, and Senators Hart, Nunn, and Wofford.  Alan ran again for the Senate in Massachusetts in 2011.

President George H. W. Bush appointed and the Senate confirmed Alan to the Board of Directors of the Commission on National and Community Service, which he served as Vice-Chair from 1991 to 1993.  Alan has also served on the boards of leading national nonprofits including Teach For America and Share our Strength, and has received numerous awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur Award and multiple honorary degrees. In 2006, US News and World Report named him one of America's 25 Best Leaders.

Alan is the author of Big Citizenship: How pragmatic idealism can bring out the best in America. Alan lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife, Vanessa Kirsch, and their two children.

Fletcher H. Wiley

Fletcher H. "Flash" Wiley graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1965, and continued his studies as a Fulbright Scholar in Paris, France at L'Institut Des Etudes Politiques. Following service as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, Mr. Wiley resigned his commission to pursue graduate studies. In 1974, he received his Masters in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and his law degree from Harvard Law School.

For more than two decades, Mr. Wiley worked as a practicing attorney concentrating in the areas of corporate and commercial law, small business development, entertainment law, and real estate.  On September 1, 1996, Mr. Wiley resigned as a Senior Partner with the Boston Law firm of Goldstein & Manello, P.C. to join PRWT Services, Inc., a Philadelphia-based products and services company, as a principal of the company and its Executive Vice President and General Counsel.  On September 30, 2008, Mr. Wiley retired from employment with PRWT after playing a key role in building it into one of the nation’s largest minority-owned businesses and Black Enterprise Magazine’s 2009 “Company of the Year”.  He remains a Principal in the Company, and is the Chairman of the PRWT Advisory Board.

Mr. Wiley has served as a Director of several for-profit business organizations, including three public companies.  He recently retired after two decades as a Director of The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE).  He is also “Of Counsel” to Bingham McCutchen LLP, one of the nation’s largest law firms, where he specializes in corporate and commercial law.  Additionally, as Chairman and CEO of The Centaurus Group, LLC, Mr. Wiley is an investor and principal in several commercial, real estate development, and management consulting ventures.

Mr. Wiley is extensively involved in civic and charitable activities. In 1984, he founded and chaired until 1990 the Governor's Commission on Minority Business Development. He also served as a Director of the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation of Boston from 1980 to 1993.   In 1994, he stepped down from a 7-year involvement as President, and then National Chairman, of the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association, Inc., to assume a two-year term as Chairman of the Board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce “GBCC”).  He is a benefactor of Crispus Attucks Children's Center, Inc.; a founding member of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School Black Alumni Organizations; a former Director of the New England Legal Foundation; Overseer of the New England Region Anti-Defamation League; and Chairman of the Board of The Dimock Center, Inc.  He is also the recipient of numerous civic and professional awards, including induction in 2010 into the GBCC’s “Academy of Distinguished Bostonians”.  In 2011, he was named by U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates to the Board of Visitors of The Air University; and in 2012, President Obama appointed him to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Mr. Wiley is a member of the Bars of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and District of Columbia, and belongs to the American, National, and Massachusetts Bar Associations.

He and his wife, Benaree Pratt Wiley, reside in Brookline, Massachusetts. They have two children, Pratt (35) and B. J. (33).

Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, Ph.D.

Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, Ph.D., is the Chief Executive Officer of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), a Boston-based community building nonprofit organization founded in 1968 to develop low- and moderate-income housing, provide support services to families, and promote and preserve Latino artistic expression.

During her tenure, IBA has completed a dramatic financial, operational and programmatic turnaround, which has resulted in increased funding that has brought the organization out of deficit and into budget increases for the past five years.   Dr. Calderón-Rosado has implemented a non-profit business strategy that has resulted in solid fundraising and a stronger organization that is now poised to take a more active role in public policy issues affecting Latino children in Massachusetts.   Under her leadership, IBA has expanded the Pathway Technology Campus, a joint venture with Bunker Hill Community College that created a technology-infused satellite campus in Villa Victoria (IBA’s affordable housing community); and has increased IBA’s arts and culture programs to anchor it as New England’s prime Latino arts hub.

She has served as advisor to various high-profile searches, including Boston Police Commissioner, Edward Davis.  In 2009, Dr. Calderón-Rosado was selected for the prestigious Barr Foundation Fellowship granted to 12 of the most gifted non-profit leaders in Greater Boston.  In 2010, Massachusetts’ Governor Deval Patrick appointed her to the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

She is a Puerto Rican-born community leader who dedicated her past efforts to academic teaching and policy research in areas affecting Latinos and other populations of color.  She received her doctorate in Public Policy on Aging at the Gerontology Center, University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Dr. Calderón-Rosado lives in Milton, Massachusetts, with her husband and two sons, where she is actively engaged in the schools and affordable housing issues.  She enjoys reading, dancing, pilates and Zumba, cooking, traveling and the company of family and friends.

Current Civic involvement & accomplishments

• Member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
• 2009 Barr Foundation Fellow
• Member of Year Up’s Boston Board
• Member of Board of Directors of Boston Afterschool and Beyond
• Member of Board of Directors of National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders
• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Franklin Square House Foundation
• Member of Advisory Committee of Center for Community Health Improvement at Massachusetts General Hospital
• Member of the Diversity Advisory Committee at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

About Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA)
IBA was founded in 1968 by a group of predominately Puerto Rican community activists that stared down Boston’s urban renewal bulldozers and organized to gain control over the development of their neighborhood.  The development of Villa Victoria, a 435-unit affordable housing community in Boston’s South End, is considered a seminal moment in the history of community development in Boston.

Today, IBA is dedicated to increase the social and economic power of individuals and families through education, economic development, technology and arts programming that builds safe, vibrant and culturally diverse affordable housing communities.