Michael Sack is a visiting senior fellow
at JFF, where he works on several initiatives aimed at
improving pathways to college and career success for opportunity youth, including two social innovation fund projects (Opportunity
Works and Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential), the National Equity Partners project designed
to increase registered apprenticeship opportunities for underserved
populations, and a Juvenile Justice Reentry Program through the DOE’s Office of
Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE).
Mr. Sack is a former classroom teacher
with an extensive background in the fields of urban education and workforce and youth
development. His career has encompassed
a distinctive blend of policy, practice, program design, and evaluation and his
perspective has been shaped by years of personal connection to frontline staff
and the populations they serve. This
balanced expertise has made him uniquely suited to support a broad array of
national educational reform and workforce preparation initiatives.
At Public/Private Ventures in
Philadelphia, he led several national demonstration projects aimed at improving
the life chances of at-risk youth and young adults and spearheaded the
development of several exemplary work/learning curricula for practitioners and
organizations throughout the country. As a visiting Senior Fellow at MDRC in
New York, he helped implement a welfare-to-work demonstration for residents of
public housing and, later, helped design and test out additional innovative
work/learning curricula and pathway-to-college models for Career Academy high
schools across the country. He was a senior member of MDRC’s implementation
team on a US DOE demonstration designed to enhance reading and math achievement
in after school programs and, more recently, on the evaluation of a Gates-supported
innovative Professional Development initiative (iPD) for high school teachers.
Mr. Sack was the founding education director
for Youth Empowerment Services (YESPhilly) in Philadelphia, where he guided an
innovative “GED-to-College” program and distinctive media arts–based
accelerated high school. Prior to helping establish YESPhilly, he was the founding education
director of YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School and coach to numerous
YouthBuild programs seeking to enhance their work-based education models and college
access and retention programs.
Mr. Sack is a frequent presenter at the national,
state, and local levels and has trained numerous groups of teachers and other
professional staff on best practices in youth development, college access,
workforce readiness, and education design, curriculum and assessment. He currently serves on the boards of
YESPhilly High School and Soccer Without Borders (SWB).
