Stanley Pollack is the author “Moving Beyond Icebreakers” an innovative approach to group facilitation, learning and action. He began his career in the early 1970’s working with juvenile offenders in Trenton, NJ. From 1973 to 1982, as a youth worker and later as director of the Mayor’s Office of Youth Services in Somerville, MA, he developed innovative methods for engaging youth in a process of creating positive change in their communities, the basis for the current Teen Empowerment Model. From 1982 to 1991, Mr. Pollock provided consultation in the model to more than 40 organizations, including City Year, the Food Project, Serve Houston, and the city of Boston’s Community Centers. In 1992, he founded the Center for Teen Empowerment in Boston’s South End/Lower Roxbury, an area that was plagued by serious problems with youth violence, gangs, and drugs. Guided by the model’s community change strategy, neighborhood youth were hired to address these problems, forming a powerful group of young people that was able to forge a long-lasting peace agreement among warring factions. Teen Empowerment opened its first site in a Boston public school in 1994. The program now has six sites — four in Boston, one in Somerville, and one in Rochester, NY – and also provides consultation and training to a wide range of social, educational, and youth service agencies. Under Mr. Pollack’s leadership, Teen Empowerment has engaged over 25,000 people in social change initiatives, and has involved hundreds of school faculty, police officers, and youth workers in training designed to improve their agencies’ ability to meet their goals.