Managing Director, VCY Stratagem LLC
Although formally educated as a mechanical engineer and physicist, Victor C. Young has served as a teacher, foundation executive, consultant, advisor to a number of large-district superintendents, policy makers, corporate leaders and CEO of nonprofit organizations over the past 35 years. Victor served as the senior program officer for pre-collegiate education at the Cleveland Foundation, senior staff consultant for education at the Rockefeller Foundation (NYC) and a consultant and advisor to numerous other philanthropies, big and small. He conceptualized, planned and helped start St. Philip’s Academy (now Phillip’s Academy Charter School), a highly acclaimed school in Newark, NJ, primarily serving high poverty Newark students. He also started and launched the Stark Education Partnership (Canton, OH), one of the first and most accomplished K-16 county-wide partnerships in the country. In the 1980s, while teaching physics at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, he served as director of the Math and Science for Minority Students Program (known as (MS)2), one of the first STEM programs specifically focused on serving Black, Latino and Native American students. Young has led a number of nonprofits (ranging from small to $20MM budget with 200 employees) and for over a decade led a consulting group serving clients such as USAID, the Department for International Development (DFID) in the U.K. and philanthropies such as the Heinz Endowments, Ford, Rockefeller and Stuart Foundations.
Known as a social entrepreneur, Young has been directly involved with securing funding for nonprofits and social ventures, having raised millions of dollars in grant monies in support of a number of organizations and initiatives. His professional passion lies with helping non-profits, governments and philanthropic leaders develop and deliver effective, scalable and sustainable solutions to social problems. As a public speaker, he has had the privilege of addressing such diverse audiences as the Council on Foundations, the writers and producers for National Public Radio, the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University to name a select few.
Young is a graduate of St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, earned his BS in mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, holds an Ed.M. in administration, social policy and planning from the Harvard University and completed his doctoral studies in management at Harvard. He is married with two adult children.
