Biography: Roger L. Landrum
Dr. Roger Landrum has a long, distinguished career as a path-breaking leader in the development of youth service programming and policy at international, national, state and local levels. He has founded and led three nonprofit organizations devoted to this cause, while advising and developing coalitions with presidents, governors, Members of Congress, foundations, corporations, educators, and hundreds of program leaders and youth activists. In recognition of this work, 10 national organizations--including United Way of America, National 4-H, Points of Light Foundation, City Year and Public Allies-- presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for “vision, commitment and leadership for the national and community service field.”

Landrum began his public service career as one of the first Peace Corps Volunteers in 1961, teaching in Nigeria, followed by staff roles at Peace Corps headquarters developing new approaches to recruitment, training, and overseas program evaluation. Landrum’s experience in Nigeria is featured in a Peace Corps documentary by independent filmmaker David Schickele.

In 1967, Landrum founded his first nonprofit organization, Teachers Inc., which recruited, trained, placed and supported corps of talented young teachers for inner-city schools in New York City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. This work was widely publicized in the national press and supported by foundations, the US Department of Education, and participating public school systems. Among the program’s alumni are US Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota.

Landrum calls 1973 through 1977 “my Ivy League period.” He taught at Yale and Harvard, first as a Research Fellow at Yale’s Center for Social and Policy Studies where he also developed an undergraduate teacher-education program, and then as a doctoral student in human development at Harvard.

In 1978, Landrum became staff director of a Potomac Institute blue-ribbon committee on national youth service chaired by Harris Wofford (later US Senator from Pennsylvania and CEO of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service). From this work, Potomac published Youth and the Needs of the Nation, co-authored by Landrum and Wofford and considered by many to be the original blueprint for AmeriCorps and other federal youth service programs and policies. While at Potomac Institute, Landrum conducted a comparative study of national youth service systems in Germany, France and the US for the German Marshall Fund of the US and, for the Director of the Peace Corps, a 20-year program and policy review of its volunteer education assistance operations worldwide.