A Different Kind of Leader
Alan Khazei is not a career politician. He’s a movement leader, a march organizer and a builder who’s founded multiple non-profits, including City Year, all in service to people and our local communities.
LOCAL SERVICE, NATIONAL IMPACT
Alan led the movement to establish a domestic peace corps in America.
Founding City Year, saving AmeriCorps, and helping pass the Kennedy Serve America Act paved the way for 1.1 million volunteers to improve lives and local communities across the country.
It’s time to send a different kind of leader to Congress who has proven there’s a different way of doing things that can achieve big results, even in Washington. That’s Alan Khazei.
"an American original"-Senator Harris Wofford
This is Alan’s story. It’s the story of how a son of immigrants makes good on the values he’s raised with to build a life in service to others.
Origins
Alan’s mom is an Italian American nurse. His dad, a doctor in residency, is an Iranian American immigrant. The two meet in an operating room, and a few years later Alan is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Al’s Grandpa John Picardi immigrated from Italy. He and Grandma Antina Picardi are small business owners with a shoe shop and corner store.
Alan spends his early years raised in his Italian grandparents home in Kittanning, a small town in the coal and steel country of western Pennsylvania.
Role Models For Service
Grandpa Picardi and Uncle Angelo Red Mantini fought in WWII, with Uncle Red awarded a Purple Heart.
Dad performs cancer research at Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts. The family moves to Bedford, New Hampshire where Dr. Khazei becomes Chief of Surgery at the VA Hospital in Manchester, and Mom works as a school nurse. Dr. Khazei quietly establishes a private practice committed to serving all patients, regardless of their ability to pay and is elected president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.
School
Alan earns his first communion and completes public grade school at McKelvie in Bedford, New Hampshire..
Activism Takes Shape
Alan’s joyful, trailblazing activism takes shape as he founds the first annual Harvard Dance Marathon fundraiser. The Dance Marathon goes on to become a long running institution raising thousands of dollars for the Jefferson Park neighborhood.
LAW STUDENT CHOOSES A LIFE OF SERVICE
Alan attends Harvard Law School. He finds a partner in Michael Brown, his roommate and best friend. Together, they start City Year as law school students.
City Year
City Year, which unites young people from all backgrounds, ages 17 to 24, for a year of full-time service, is launched in Boston in 1988. The non-profit eventually becomes a national institution serving local communities in 29 cities across America.
AmeriCorps
In 1993, Alan helps President Bill Clinton build Americorps, a national service program which takes inspiration from City Year.
Alan works with President Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela to launch a site in Johannesburg, South Africa. Three more sites are formed in the United Kingdom as City Year goes global.
Vanessa
Alan meets his kindred spirit, Vanessa Kirsch, at a social entrepreneurship conference in Concord, Massachusetts. Vanessa is the founder of Public Allies, a marquee national service program developing leaders and change agents across the country.
Alan blessed by Mother Teresa
Experiencing The World
Alan and Vanessa travel the world to learn from other change agents, philanthropists, government officials, NGO & business leaders
They visit more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern and Western Europe.
Family
Vanessa and Alan marry and build a family of four in Brookline, Massachusetts. Vanessa goes on to found New Profit, a pioneering venture philanthropy organization that invests in breakthrough leaders and systems change initiatives.
Save Americorps
In 2003, when Tom Delay tries to eliminate AmeriCorps, Alan unites the service movement to launch the Save AmeriCorps campaign.
Banding Together In Common Cause
Alan and his colleagues forge a national, bipartisan coalition of 44 Governors, 150 Mayors, 250 business and nonprofit leaders, and 200 University Presidents.Their effort culminates in a 108-hour around the clock, people’s hearing in Washington DC, where people from 48 states testify how AmeriCorps has changed their lives and communities.
Big Results
The Save AmeriCorps campaign saves the billion dollar agency and Americorps’ funding is not only restored, but increased by 50%.
Since its founding, AmeriCorps has given more than 1.1 million people a chance to serve: educating children, preserving our environment, providing access to healthcare and affordable housing and responding to too many natural disasters.
Voices For National Service
Alan co-founds Voices for National Service following the successful Save AmeriCorps campaign, to create a hub for the national service movement.
Kennedy Serve America Act
On September 11, 2008 ServiceNation, the first campaign launched by Be The Change, unites both Presidential Nominees. Then Senators John McCain and Barack Obama come together in a national summit on service. Senator Hillary Clinton delivers the keynote address.
Be The Change
In 2007, Alan launches Be the Change, Inc., a nonprofit that creates national issue based campaigns by mobilizing non-partisan coalitions of nonprofits, policymakers, private sector leaders, academics, and citizens.
AN ADVOCATE FOR A NUCLEAR FREE WORLD
Alan joins Global Zero as a founding advisory board member. The initiative, launched in 2008, promotes a phased withdrawal and verification for the destruction of all devices held by official and unofficial members of the nuclear club.
A Dark Horse Campaign For US Senate
In 2009, Alan runs, as an unknown, for Ted Kennedy’s vacated Senate seat. While Alan doesn’t win the brief, ninety day, special election, he earns the Boston Globe endorsement.
November 29, 2009
“Khazei offers a strong vision for success… channeling the energy of activist groups and private-sector policy incubators while dedicating himself to the laborious task of building legislative coalitions. The recent service bill named for Kennedy and providing for 250,000 volunteers in a domestic Peace Corps is largely the fruit of his labors.”-The Boston Globe
Alan was also among the first Congressional candidates in the country to disavow all corporate PAC and lobbyist money.
ISSUE ONE
Alan’s commitment to political reform continues as he co-writes the first business plan for Issue One, a non-partisan coalition that understands our broken political system stands in the way of progress and fixing our democracy must come first.
Big Citizenship
In 2010, Alan writes the book on how people at the grassroots, organized in common cause must drive our next era of progress.
Zuzu, The Khazei Family Grows
Zuzu, a mini- Australian Labradoodle joins the family. Naturally, Zuzu launches his own cause, Bark The Change. When not at work, Zuzu enjoys walks, dog chews and tearing apart his favorite pillow.
Service Year Alliance
Alan works with General Stanley McChrystal and John Bridgeland to create the Service Year Alliance, dedicated to making a service year a rite of passage for all young adults, whether they volunteer for military or civilian service.
2017 Women's March
When Trump is elected, women all over the world start to organize. So does Alan. Alan serves on the Steering Committee for the Boston Women's March and co-founds the Sister March Network which connects the 645 Women's marches that take place outside of Washington, D.C. which mobilize four million marchers all over the world.
2018 March For Our Lives
When the Parkland students lift their voices in opposition to gun violence, Alan draws on the lessons of the Sister March Network.He works with the Bloomberg Foundation and Everytown for Gun Safety to support the March for Our Lives Sibling March Network, which networks over 800 marches and more than two million marchers worldwide.
Democracy Entrepreneurs
2018
Inspired by a new breed of entrepreneurs dedicated to making our democracy more just and inclusive, Alan founds a new organization, Democracy Entrepreneurs to help fix and strengthen our democracy.
Do Different
Now Alan’s running for Congress, because just like you he’s had enough of the logjam in DC, and he’s the one candidate who knows the only way we’ll ever actually knock down prescription drug prices, stop gun violence or tackle the destruction of our climate is if we do things differently.Alan’s campaign isn’t powered by corporate lobbyists or Super PACs, and it’s not about the same old talking points we’ve heard a million times before.
ALL IN
Instead, it’s driven by Alan’s conviction that there’s no more powerful force for change than people banded together behind a common purpose, and making that happen has been the mission of his life. Because Alan knows when the people go all in, we win. Alan’s a trailblazer. Someone whose big vision is tethered to a relentless determination to get it done. And when he does bust down the doors of Congress, he won’t be walking in alone. He’ll be taking all of us in with him. That’s Alan Khazei.
