Gerald Chertavian is the CEO and Founder of Year Up, a non-profit organisation that provides intensive professional education to urban young adults.

His organisation was recently recognised by Fast Company and The Monitor Group as one of the top 25 organisations in the nation using business excellence to engineer social change.

Prior to starting Year Up, Chertavian co-founded Conduit Communications and served as the head of marketing at Transnational Financial Services in London.

He has been an active member of the Big Brother mentoring programme after 1985, and was awarded New York’s outstanding member in 1989.

He was additionally awarded the 2003 Social Entrepreneurship Award by the Manhattan Institute and the 2005 Freedom House Archie R. Williams, Jr. Technology Award.

A graduate of Bowdoin College and Harvard Business School, Chertavian was born and raised in Lowell, MA. ^[0]