David Owen, M.Ed., President

Throughout his career, Dave has been dedicated to helping youth, families, communities, and the organizations that serve them thrive and succeed. For more than 25 years, Dave has worked in direct service, administrative, and consulting positions at organizations such as Federation Employment Guidance Service, Institute for Student Achievement, New York City Outward Bound, and the United Nations Development Program.

As Coordinator for the Central Park Conservancy’s Experiential Education Program, Dave developed successful programs and partnerships with hundreds of schools, businesses, and youth-serving agencies. Under his leadership, program enrollment grew by seven-hundred percent to serve over three thousand youth and adults each year. Dave has also worked as the Assistant Director for FEGS Youthworks, an intensive youth development and work-study program for high-risk youth based in New York City and Israel. While at Youthworks, he helped design, implement, and evaluate a high-impact curriculum that provided life-skills training, mentoring, experiential education, and professional skills development to participating high school students.

Dave holds a Master's Degree in Human Development and Psychology specializing in Adolescent Risk and Prevention from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. While at Harvard he learned practical applications for integrating cutting-edge research on risk, resilience, and prevention programming for children and adolescents in both school and community settings. Dave also completed coursework in non-profit management and accounting at the Kennedy School of Government. As an academic tutor and intern counselor for Project IF (a partnership program between Harvard and Mass. General Hospital), Dave helped raise math scores and improve social outcomes in students from an inner-city Boston high school.

In 1999 Dave founded Owen Consulting Inc., and has been helping clients lead successful educational and social-impact initiatives ever since. He has served as Team Leader to the United Nations Task Force on Adolescents and Youth in the Republic of the Maldives, where he led research efforts to create a UN National Human Development Report on Youth. Dave has also consulted to work-based youth mentoring programs run by companies such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Asset Management, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bank of America, and consults regularly to mentoring organizations throughout the NYC area. He served as a member of the Mentoring Partnership of New York’s Young Professional Advisory Board, and has presented at numerous educational, philanthropic, and business seminars.

An alumnus of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), Dave is also a former NY State Licensed rock climbing guide and Wilderness First Responder with more than 30 years of personal and professional outdoor education and climbing experience. Dave's commitment to helping people stems from his own experiences as a youth participant in wilderness leadership programs, and in working as a teacher overseas. As an adult he still loves to head into the mountains and travel whenever possible.