Jack Boyson is the Programs Director in the Education and Employment Units of the International Youth Foundation located in Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently serving as the team leader of two international initiatives: The Education and Livelihood Skills Alliance a school quality/access and job training program for disadvantaged young people living in Muslim Mindanao, the Philippines; and The Wrigley Youth. Empowerment. Success (Y.E.S.) Program, life and employability skills program helping disadvantaged youth in India, Poland, Russia, Philippines and Spain.

In 2004 he co-developed, pilot tested, and operationalized a 60 lesson life and employability curriculum entitled Passport to Success targeting disadvantaged youth, ages 14-24, which includes lessons dealing with managing strong emotions, assertiveness, refusal skills, stressful situations, problem solving, managing conflict, reducing intimidation and bullying, and gender-based violence and sexual abuse, as well as lessons on healthy behaviors, effective work habits, and service learning. To date, some 35,000 at-risk youth in Hungary, India, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, the Philippines, Russia, and Tanzania have successfully completed the life skills program.  

He also serves as an advisor on life and employability skills for IYF’s Education and Employment Alliance Program in Pakistan, the Youth: Work Jordan Job Training Program in Jordan, and the BridgIT school quality and access program in Tanzania. 

Over the past 16 years at IYF, he planned many of the Foundation’s major initiatives in education, employment, and youth leadership and engagement, provided technical assistance in capacity building to such programs, and evaluated their impacts.  

He has conducted training workshops on project planning, evaluation, organizational capacity-building, and program sustainability and provided technical assistance to fellow staff and staff of the Foundation’s global network of country partners, as well as to staff of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development.  

Prior to joining IYF, Mr. Boyson served as Project Planner and Acting Director of the Office of Planning for ADRA/International. In addition to his work at IYF, he is Lecturer in International Development for Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, which includes preparing curriculums for the University’s distance learning Masters degree in international development program in the areas of social needs assessments, project planning, proposal writing, resource mobilization, and sustainability.