Gail Manza

Ms. Manza is a social worker and an advocate for children and youth. For more than two decades, she led initiatives to focus the combined resources of the public and private sectors on helping America’s young people succeed.

During her tenure as MENTOR’s CEO, she worked with a strong board and dedicated staff team to galvanize a national mentoring movement dedicated to dramatically increasing the number of young people with caring adult mentors.

Accomplishments aimed at building the basic infrastructure critical to building high-quality mentoring opportunities included seeding a national network of State Mentoring Partnerships; establishing national evidence-based standards of practice; and working with Congress to establish the first comprehensive background check system for youth workers and volunteers – including mentors.

Prior to her work at MENTOR, Ms. Manza began her career as a community organizer and then served in a series of management positions in the nonprofit sector, including Senior Vice President at United Way of America. There she was an architect of the Mobilization for America’s Children, a national initiative designed to advance the well-being of America’s young people and dedicated to promoting the nationwide expansion of Success by 6.

In addition to past board service in this sector, Ms. Manza is on the boards of the National Human Service Assembly and of her alma mater, the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Ms. Manza was also a founding chair of the Federal Mentoring Council and its National Mentoring Working Group , a co-founder of 1000 Women for Mentoring and continues to serve MENTOR as an Emeritus Fellow.

Ms. Manza has a master’s degree from the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Community Planning and is currently completing doctoral studies at the Bryn Mawr School of Social Work and Social Research.