Saturday, July 24, 2010
Patrick Corvington was sworn in as Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) on February 18, 2010. He has spent much of his career in the non-profit world, focusing on issues ranging from homelessness to disadvantaged children. The CNCS makes grants to volunteer organizations through programs that include AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America.
Corvington’s parents fled Haiti in 1963 during the regime of dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and immigrated to Africa. Corvington was born in Congo and, when he was in second grade, moved to Uganda, where he learned English. After a stay in Morocco, the family moved to the United States in 1982 when Corvington was a teenager. He visited Haiti for the first time in 1986. Corvington became a U.S. citizen in Baltimore in May 1993.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his master’s in public policy from Johns Hopkins University, where he received a National Minority Leadership Fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Corvington began his career traveling the East Coast, particularly in Florida, as a case manager working with migrant workers. He later served as an advocate for adjudicated youth as interim director at the Sykesville Group Shelter Home and as a patient advocate in a community-based HIV/AIDS clinic.
At The Urban Institute, Corvington conducted policy research in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center and worked to build nonprofit organizations abroad.
In 2003, he was named executive director of the Innovation Network, a non-profit agency that seeks to help other non-profits improve their operations and fundraising.
Corvington accepted a position as a senior associate in May 2005 with The Annie E. Casey Foundation, dedicated to helping improve the lives of disadvantaged children. In this capacity, he also served as a senior advisor to the foundation’s executive vice president, Ralph Smith. During this time he co-authored monographs, such as Ready to Lead: Next Generation Leaders Speak Out and Next Shift: Beyond the Nonprofit Leadership Crisis.
Corvington has served on the board of directors of Echoing Green and the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers, and on the advisory board of the American Humanics Nonprofit Workforce Coalition.
Corvington is married and has two daughters.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Official Biography (Corporation for National and Community Service)
Questions for: Patrick Corvington (by Laura van Straaten, Responsibility Project)
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