Gerald C. Chertavian

Gerald Chertavian is the Founder of Year Up, one of the nation’s largest and most effective youth workforce development programs. Chertavian was a successful technology entrepreneur and Wall Street banker, but it was through his many years as a Big Brother that he found his true calling. The young adults he met had immense talent, yet all too often they were stranded outside the economic mainstream. Chertavian saw that when given a fair chance, with challenging standards and high support, these young people could accomplish anything.

In 2000, he dedicated his life and business expertise to closing the “Opportunity Divide”, and Year Up was born. Since then, Year Up has become one of the fastest growing non-profits in the nation and has been recognized by Fast Company and The Monitor Group as one of the top 25 organizations using business excellence to engineer social change. Year Up has served 45,000 young adults in 30 locations across the nation, with an operating budget in excess of $190M.

In 2008, he was appointed by then-Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick to serve on the Massachusetts State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. In 2013, he was appointed by Governor Patrick to serve as chairman of the Roxbury Community College Board of Trustees and reappointed to that role by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker in 2016. Gerald earned a B.A. in Economics, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College and in 2017 he was awarded the Bowdoin Common Good Award. He received his M.B.A., with honors, from Harvard Business School and in 1992 and received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2014. He served on the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative and is a former member of the World Economic Forum’s Youth Unemployment Council. Gerald is also an Emeritus Trustee of both Bowdoin College and the Boston Foundation.  His 2012 book, A Year Up, is a New York Times best seller.