Sarah Schulman (Closing)

Sarah Schulman is a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where she is completing her doctorate on participatory governance and collaborative policymaking. Her research is based on a year of working alongside civil servants in the UK, US, and New Zealand. While in the field, Sarah met with over 200 senior civil servants, political appointees, and ministers and led four action learning sets. Sarah continues to develop tools and deliver workshops that help civil servants better understand the citizens they serve.

Sarah’s interest in collaborative problem-solving stems from a decade of working alongside state and local governments, non-profits, and community coalitions to engage youth in program design and delivery. Since 1998, Sarah has run Youth Infusion, a student-run company she started that provides technical assistance and capacity building to youth-serving organizations. Youth Infusion blends organizational change and participatory governance approaches to help organizations reorient around the needs of users, rather than systems. Current clients include the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the National Assembly of School-Based Health Care.

Sarah formed Youth Infusion as a high-school student after experiences leading two failed social enterprises. Sarah learned early-on that talk remains talk unless it is embedded within organizational structures, processes, and performance frameworks. She has worked in a wide variety of different organizational structures, including serving as a fellow for a California State Senator and a US Congressman, an adviser to the US Assistant Surgeon General, a policy writer for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and the editor-in-chief of a Scholastic Publication.

Currently, Sarah serves as Youth Project Lead for Participle, a social start-up in London. Participle redesigns public services using ‘transformative design’ principles to generate user-driven solutions to vexing social issues. Sarah has led a team of designers and entrepreneurs who have worked with young people to come up with a new model for universal youth services. This new model is currently being prototyped with plans to scale-up to reach tens of thousands of young people over the next three years.

Sarah’s passion for social change has long been interwoven in her academic pursuits. She is committed to interdisciplinary thinking and in 2005 graduated from Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.A in Human Biology and an M.A in Education Policy. While at Stanford, Sarah collaborated with her mentor, Former Assistant Secretary of Health Phil Lee, to rethink Medicare benefits and prescription drug coverage. Sarah’s unique combination of experiences has made her a highly sought after keynote speaker. She has addressed such organizations as the American School Health Association, the American Cancer Society, and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.


Interview with Sarah Schulman