Jodi L. Schwartz

Ms. Schwartz became LYRIC’s Executive Director on October 1, 2005, bringing over 20 years of experience of nonprofit work and an ardent commitment to social justice.

Throughout her career, Ms. Schwartz has worked with youth and their families in their struggle to disengage from the juvenile justice system, has teamed with youth in need of support in and out of school, and has supported youth in serving their peers and the broader community through civic activism and youth philanthropy.

Before joining LYRIC, Ms. Schwartz was the Managing Director of Resource Development Associates (RDA), responsible for internal operations and the overall coordination of and staffing for 25-35 projects across all four RDA divisions: Evaluation and Planning, Grant Writing and Planning, Organizational Development, and MIS. While at RDA, Ms. Schwartz provided evaluation support for over 25 San Francisco community-based organizations, including the San Francisco Beacon Initiative, and facilitated a series of nine interactive small group management information system trainings for 164 San Francisco-based provider and government agency personnel to support client management practices and evaluation data collection. In addition, Ms. Schwartz developed school-readiness plans in Solano County for children age 0-5 and their families, lead a multi-system school district-wide Safe Schools Healthy Students planning process, provided executive coaching and strategic planning support to various nonprofit organizations, and worked on multiple grant writing projects.

Before joining RDA, Ms. Schwartz was the Executive Director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ), a private, non-profit criminal justice organization which she co-founded. While at CJCJ, Ms. Schwartz led the development and implementation of a number of innovative programs aimed at reducing society’s reliance on incarceration as a solution to social problems. She raised over $8 million and oversaw CJCJ’s transformation from a single office with 10 staff to a national organization with over 75 employees in four cities. Ms. Schwartz’s dedication to leadership development at CJCJ fostered the creation of a diverse staff comprised of more than 80% people of color and more than one-third with previous histories of incarceration, substance abuse, and/or homelessness.

Stemming from her life experience and personal values, Ms. Schwartz believes that sustained achievement of positive social change must be built as a collective community effort, where everyone shares in leadership and visionary roles and is supported in their fulfillment of those roles. She works to ensure that youth, in particular, are afforded opportunities to give voice to their stories and are supported in their role as community leaders, now and in the future.