Geoffrey Canada
President & CEO, Harlem Children's Zone

Geoffrey Canada, President and Chief Executive Officer for Harlem Children’s Zone and named as one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report, will offer the keynote speech Monday morning, June 23, at the National Charter Schools Conference in New Orleans at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Mr. Canada is nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform. Jonathan Kozol, the National Book Award-winning author, called Mr. Canada, “One of the few authentic heroes of New York and one of the best friends children have, or ever will have, in our nation.”

The Harlem Children’s Zone Project provides a comprehensive range of services over 100 blocks and aims to serve more than 10,000 children by 2011. It has been called by The New York Times Magazine “one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time… [It] combines educational, social and medical services. It starts at birth and follows children to college. It meshes those services into an interlocking web, and then it drops that web over an entire neighborhood….The objective is to create a safety net woven so tightly that children in the neighborhood just can’t slip through.”

In 2006, Mr. Canada was selected by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as co-chair of The Commission on Economic Opportunity, which was asked to formulate a plan to significantly reduce poverty. In 2007, he was appointed co-chair of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board.

Mr. Canada received the first Heinz Award in 1994 for his years of work advocating for children and families in some of America’s most devastated communities. In 2004, he was given the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education and Child Magazine’s Children’s Champion Award.

He also has received the Heroes of the Year Award from the Robin Hood Foundation, The Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Spirit of the City Award from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Brennan Legacy Award from New York University, and the Common Good Award from Bowdoin College. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard University, Bowdoin College, Williams College, John Jay College, Bank Street College, and Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary.

Mr. Canada is the author of two books: “Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America” and “Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America,” of which Publishers Weekly said “a more powerful depiction of the tragic life of urban children and a more compelling plea to end ‘America's war against itself’ cannot be imagined.”

Mr. Canada is also the East Coast Regional Coordinator for the Black Community Crusade for Children, a nationwide effort to make saving black children the top priority in the black community. This initiative is coordinated by Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund.

The work of Mr. Canada and Harlem Children’s Zone has become a national model and has been the subject of many profiles in the media. Their work has been featured on “60 Minutes,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” “CBS This Morning,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” National Public Radio’s “On Point,” as well in articles in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, USA Today and Newsday.