Managing Director, VCY Stratagem LLC
Victor C. Young is an education strategist, philanthropic leader and champion for equitable, community-centered systems of learning and development. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of KnowledgeWorks, supporting the organization’s mission to advance personalized and competency-based learning so that every learner has the opportunity, support and agency to succeed in school, work and life.
For more than four decades, Victor has worked at the intersection of education, philanthropy and public policy to expand opportunity and redesign systems to better serve children, families and communities. His leadership experience includes service as a foundation executive at the Cleveland Foundation, senior education consultant at the Rockefeller Foundation, nonprofit CEO, teacher and principal of an impact-consulting firm supporting national education initiatives and community development strategies.
Throughout his career, Victor has helped communities build capacity, mobilize cross-sector partnerships and implement research-based approaches to improving teaching and learning – particularly in historically underserved neighborhoods. He has played key roles in designing cradle-to-career civic collaboratives, early literacy and teacher-development programs, and integrated school-community support systems in urban, suburban and rural settings.
Victor’s work has extended internationally as well, providing technical assistance to education reform and workforce development efforts in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Through engagements with USAID, the UK’s Department for International Development and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, he has supported the design of education systems that balance access, quality and local ownership across diverse cultural and economic contexts.
He remains deeply committed to collective impact as a driver of sustained community transformation and to ensuring that all students – especially those traditionally marginalized – benefit from high-quality instruction grounded in the science of reading alongside personalized, competency-based approaches to learning. Today, he focuses on helping school districts, municipalities and civic leaders build birth-to-workforce systems that integrate great teaching, strong family supports, healthy community partnerships and shared accountability for equitable outcomes.
Victor is a graduate of St. Paul’s School, earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and holds an Ed.M. in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University, where he also completed doctoral studies in management. He and his wife reside in South Carolina and enjoy spending time with their children and granddaughter.
