Stewart Wakeling serves as a senior program officer for the Haas, Jr. Fund’s Strengthening Families program, directing the Fund’s multi-generational approach to strengthening families in the Bay Area.

Before coming to the Fund in 2005, Stewart worked for 20 years on youth and family issues, including juvenile justice, child protection, community violence, and development of related policy, programs and research.

As executive director of the Community Partnership for Families of San Joaquin, California, Stewart created a successful county collaborative that operated family resource centers devoted to improving economic and education opportunities for low-income children and families. He also created “Operation Peacekeeper,” a strategic partnership among local law enforcement and social service agencies that reduced youth homicide by 80 percent. Before that, Stewart was a senior researcher at the Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he worked on community approaches to justice and preventing child abuse and neglect. He has also worked in New York and Boston on several community-based human service initiatives.

Stewart received his B.A. in Developmental psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and his Masters in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.