Contributor

Jonah Edelman, CEO, Stand for Children

Jonah Martin Edelman is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Stand for Children. Edelman's personal stand for children began when he taught a six-year-old bilingual child in New Haven, Connecticut to read. More volunteer efforts followed. He ran a teen pregnancy prevention speakers' bureau, founded a mentorship program for middle school students, and served as an administrator of an enrichment program for children living in public housing-Leadership Education and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP).

Edelman was born and raised in Washington, D.C., graduated from Yale University in 1992, and attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, where in three years (1992-1995) he earned masters and doctor of philosophy degrees in politics. In 1996, Edelman moved from direct service to activism, helping to organize Stand for Children Day. Since Stand for Children's historic founding rally in Washington, D.C. in 1996, Edelman has helped Stand for Children become a pathbreaking child-advocacy organization. In 1998, after closely studying the work of a range of organizations, he conceptualized Stand for Children's grassroots advocacy approach and then moved to Oregon to field-test it himself.

Stand for Children now has affiliates in Oregon, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, and Colorado and its members have won 105 state and local successes, achieving a number of important education reforms and leveraging more than $2.3 billion in public funding for programs that are improving the lives of more than 2.5 million children.

Edelman is the first Oregon resident to be awarded a prestigious Ashoka fellowship and is a Hunt Alternatives Fund Prime Mover. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Charese Rohny and their twin sons Levi and Elijah.