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Program Development: Leon Andrews

Leon Andrews joined the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families at the National League of Cities as their program director for youth development in March 2006. Before joining the National League of Cities, Leon completed a research fellowship at The Forum for Youth Investment. Leon has an extensive background working in government, the community, the private sector, and academia for the last 15 years.

Leon Andrews has worked for the United States Department of Justice as a case analyst and as a legislative assistant for United States Senator Barbara A.

Mikulski Leon served as a project director for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services where he managed a planning project for the 16 to 25 year old youth population in transition. Leon Andrews has worked with several community organizations in the Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Washington DC areas, including, but not limited to, YouthBuild Pittsburgh, Young Detroit Builders, and the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights in Washington DC. He also served as a field manager for the United States Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG)

Leon Andrews worked as a political consultant for senatorial, congressional, and presidential candidates and as a marketing research consultant for IBM, formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he provided policy and analytical expertise for the Internal Revenue Service and the Health Care Financing Administration. Leon Andrews served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Michigan University for three years.

As a urban planning PhD student at The University of Michigan, Leon studied positive youth development in the United States. His dissertation is a process evaluation study of how state and local municipalities create and implement a youth master plan. While living in Michigan, Leon was a research associate at The University of Michigan for two projects. The first was a nationally funded project by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that analyzed youth participation in local government. The second was a locally funded project by The Skillman Foundation that evaluated a faith-based initiative on after-school programs in the city of Detroit.

He is an author of two publications that examine black males in the United States. The first article, "Black Males and the U.S. Economy," was published in May 2000 for The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The second article, "The Precarious Poverty Situation of Black Men," was published in an edited volume, “Black Males in White America” in 2002.

Leon Andrews received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Howard University, a Master of Science in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University, and is scheduled to defend his dissertation this fall in Urban and Regional Planning at The University of Michigan.