Keenan Coppin-Thom

Keenan is a Bronx native with an array of passions, ranging from activism and anti-racism to philanthropy and fitness. His social impact inspiration is  invested in the main issue areas of affordable housing/homelessness, education/workforce, and the intersection of economic development and racial justice. His professional experience centers around the development of the workforce, businesses, and youth in NYC, and his academic interests are focused on social/economic justice, policy, business, and law.  

Beginning as an intern to the CEO at HERE to HERE, he analyzed educational policy and workforce initiatives in NYC, before joining full time as a project manager; advancing work-based learning initiatives with students, school/business leadership, educators, and employers. His workforce project included sourcing out local businesses in need of talent to identify experiential learning opportunities that positively and profitably developed students and companies alike. On the education side, he worked in partner schools to improve upon existing work-based learning cultures by assisting with career preparation/exposure efforts and placing students in spaces where they could learn and earn. Keenan was instrumental as a founding member of the small core team that built HERE to HERE, and supported the launch of other offshoot initiatives, such as the Bronx Private Industry Council, and the Work-Based Learning Labs in the Bronx. He last served as  relationship manager and recruitment lead for the recently launched, first of its kind modern youth apprenticeship initiative; CareerWise New York.  

Keenan is a soon to be graduate of the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, where he worked internships at NYCHA, RWDSU, HR&A, Carmen De La Rosa and Justin Brannan for City Council, and now ABNY. He has served on the first northeast youth regional board for the millennial advocacy nonprofit Young Invincibles, and is the NY/DC regional Board chair for the organization Birthright Africa, which executes on its mission of sending young people to the continent of Africa to explore their roots and develop their cultural competency.    

Keenan is a lifelong learner and service-oriented leader in training, with high hopes for a better world free of inequality, injustice, and oppression, yet full of thriving communities complete with equitably accessible food, shelter, technology, education, health and public safety resources. Through the National Urban Fellows program, he aims to further develop his skills, network, career, and character, in hopes of pivoting to policy to affect change at scale in his home community of the Bronx, NYC, and beyond.