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Stoneleigh Fellowship
The Stoneleigh Fellowship provides accomplished leaders with multiyear funding to transform systems that serve youth.
Addressing the challenges facing our community’s young people requires visionary leadership. It means bringing different systems together and advancing new ways of thinking about what is possible. That’s why we provide exceptional individuals with the time and space to undertake groundbreaking research, improve policies and practices, and fundamentally change how youth are served.
Stoneleigh Fellows come from many disciplines and professional backgrounds and work to advance change in youth-serving systems, such as youth justice, child welfare, education, and health. Our Fellows have included:
- Philadelphia’s former Deputy Police Commissioner who is expanding the city’s nationally recognized Police School Diversion Program to reduce youth arrest rates and prevent the collateral consequences of justice system involvement
- An attorney who worked within the School District of Philadelphia to create a comprehensive school safety strategy
- A researcher leading a five-year study on the health of young, child welfare-involved mothers and their children to identify strategies to break intergenerational cycles of abuse and neglect
- An emergency room doctor who replicated his hospital-based violence intervention model locally and nationally
What distinguishes the Stoneleigh Fellowship?
Freedom to Pursue a Transformative Idea
Our founders believed that individuals need dedicated time and space to develop the kinds of ideas that can generate lasting systems change. We provide salary support that allows Fellows to step back from their day-to-day job duties and use the majority of their time to pursue this work.
Ability to Design and Execute New Solutions
Because we invest in people with a strong track record of working within or alongside systems, we give our Fellows the latitude to develop the best solution to the problem they’ve identified. Stoneleigh’s staff also work closely with Fellows to ensure their success by providing expert advice and connections to key influencers and funders.
We recognize that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. We support Fellows to explore ideas that haven’t been tried before or to perfect the implementation of evidence-informed solutions.
We also meet Fellows where they are professionally through flexible Fellowship terms and levels of support.
In It for the Long Haul
We understand that advancing change in large, complex systems doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why we provide Fellows multiple years of support to delve into these entrenched problems. In addition, Fellows become lifelong members of Stoneleigh’s alumni network—a committed group of social change leaders working to improve youth-serving systems.