Michael Partis

am a social impact and community wealth building leader who specializes in transforming systems. My experience includes applied research, partnership development, and executive management.

At Young Movement Inc, I developed programing in civic engagement and post-secondary success. We successfully engaged over 500 college students and millennials through our financial literacy courses, social entrepreneurship and wealth-building workshops, and public policy panels. Some of my leadership experiences include managing political campaigns, directing a place-based collective impact initiative, and co-founding The Bronx Brotherhood Project: a grassroots, community-based college success program for Black and Latino teens. I also have lead business development and consulting that has brought almost $2 million dollars of contracts to Bronx minority-owned businesses.

My work extends into designing and participating in governance models that practice shared leadership and democratic management. At the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative, I have facilitated and coordinated a multi-stakeholder coalition of 11 local organizations developing a place-based, long term economic development plan. I have served as a founding Board Member and Adult Chair to Youth Power Coalition, a youth-led collective impact organization that practices sociocracy, as a decentralized system for sharing leadership. My Board serves includes member-led organizations in community and economic development, like New Economy Coalition and the Association of Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD).

I am also an experienced educator with training in anthropology and urban studies. I’ve been a lecturer and instructor in the City University of New York system for almost ten years, and have taught in the urban studies graduate program at LIU Brooklyn. My research on digital protest movements and the 2016 Presidential election have been published in academic journals. My past research projects include social capital among two-year college students, economic development policy and small businesses, and the impact of urban evictions on family structure and kinship systems. I have also conducted policy research on increasing access to higher education, the impact of restorative justice in K-12, and resident experiences in government subsidized housing.