Chris served as Street Poets’ Executive Director for over 25 years before stepping aside in 2022 to make room for new leadership. He continues to support the Street Poets community through his development work on our Capital Campaign committee, his mentoring work with our Men’s Alumni Fire Circle, and his producing work on the Street Poets Podcast. Originally from Boston, Chris is a graduate of Duke University (B.A. English) and the American Film Institute (M.F.A. Screenwriting). He worked as an arts journalist in New York City and later as a screenwriter in Hollywood before a volunteer teaching stint in an L.A. County juvenile detention camp back in 1995 inspired him to create Street Poets. Since then, Chris has had the great privilege of facilitating over a dozen homecoming retreats for adult State prison parolees via the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and has served as a keynote speaker and on numerous conference panels exploring youth rites of passage, arts-based violence intervention strategies, multicultural community building, the healing arts and alternatives to incarceration.