Accelerating Impact Lunch 2023

About the keynote speaker

Geoffrey Canada is the president of Harlem Children’s Zone​ (HCZ), a world-renowned education and poverty-fighting organization based in New York City, and founder of William Julius Wilson Institute (WJWI)​. An innovator in the field of education, author and leading advocate for children, Canada has made it his life’s mission to help young people from under-resourced communities succeed through education.

To realize his vision, Mr. Canada launched HCZ, a comprehensive, cradle-to-career network of programs that The New York Times called “one of the most ambitious social-policy experiments of our time.” Starting as a one-block pilot project in the 1990s, HCZ today serves more than 34,000 students and families living in a 97-block area of Central Harlem in New York City.

Under Mr. Canada’s leadership, HCZ became a national model of place-based innovation for organizations across the country and the world. In 2010, President Barack Obama created the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative to replicate the HCZ model in under-resourced communities throughout the United States. Mr. Canada was subsequently named one of the world’s most influential people by Time in 2011 and as one of the 50 greatest leaders by Fortune in 2014.