Grouf

Ken Grouf '93, founder and co-executive director of City Year New York, and a panel of City Year staff and former core members, will speak at Cornell University on "Someday You'll Change the World … Welcome to Someday: A Lifetime of Community Service - How Young People Are Becoming Active Citizens and Social Entrepreneurs." The talk is slated for 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 20, in G73 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall.

City Year New York, an AmeriCorps program, is a national service organization that unites young adults, ages 17 to 24, for a year of full-time community service, leadership development and civic engagement.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Iscol Family Program for Leadership Development in Public Service, an interdisciplinary program in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. The program encourages Cornell students to engage in and launch careers in public service. By bringing notable leaders in the public service sector to the campus, the Iscol program creates a dialogue between faculty and students about how to tackle the intractable problems that face society, such as hunger, poverty, ignorance, homelessness and violence.

The audience is invited to a reception immediately following the program.

Grouf opened the City Year New York office in 2002 to provide an opportunity for young leaders to serve their community. Prior to City Year, he spent five years at Yahoo! as director of brand management and helped build Yahoo! into one of the most well-recognized global brands. Grouf began his marketing career as the director of National Programs and Marketing at Do Something. He also founded and served as the executive director of Students for Children, a nonprofit organization that encourages volunteerism and child advocacy on college campuses nationwide. He graduated with a B.A. degree from Cornell in 1993 and has served on several boards, including Kaboom, Ramapo for Children and the Northwest Settlement House.

The Iscol program is endowed by the Iscol Family Foundation. Ken Iscol, a 1960 Cornell alumnus, was a leader in the development of the Personal Enterprise and Small Business Management Program and a founding supporter of the Center for the Environment at Cornell. Jill Iscol has an interest in education, social and economic justice, child and family policy, and social change through philanthropy. She is president of the IF Hummingbird Foundation, a family foundation established by the Iscols in 1989. Its mission is to support domestic and global efforts that strengthen democracy and address the social justice, economic and educational inequities that threaten it. Their children are Cornell alumni Zachary '01 and Kiva '03.