Pittman, Karen J.

Karen Pittman has made a career starting organizations and initiatives that promote youth development. Currently, she is executive director of the Forum for Youth Investment (The Forum), cofounded in 1998 with Merita Irby. Dedicated to changing the odds for children, youth, and their families by “moving ideas to impact,” The Forum works to spark and support action by giving youth and adult leaders the information, inspiration, and support they need to increase the quality and quantity of youth investment and youth involvement in neighborhoods and across the nation.

A sociologist and recognized leader in the youth development field in the United States, Pittman began her career at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan, economic, and social policy research organization conducting numerous studies on social services for children and families and examining the impact of the Reagan era cuts on four truly needy populations. She also coauthored Testing the Social Safety Net: The Impact of Changes in Support Programs During the Reagan Administration, with Martha Burt.

In 1985, Pittman moved on to join the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), shaping their teenage pregnancy prevention work. “Young people—young men and young women—need the capacity to prevent pregnancy,” Pittman argued. “But they also need the motivation.” Pittman stressed the importance of being steadfast about providing teens with information and reproductive health services and suggested that communities be equally vigilant in providing youth with real education and employment opportunities that allow them to calculate the costs of early pregnancy. While at CDF, Pittman produced more than 30 reports on teenage pregnancy, served on the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Bipartisan Task Force, testified before Congress, and, most important, helped debunk the idea that the primary cause of teenage pregnancy is race. By commissioning special data runs, Pittman was able to demonstrate that once poverty and poor academic skills are taken into account, the differences in birthrates between African American, Hispanic, and White teens disappear. African American, White, or Hispanic young women with poor basic academic skills and poor families are at least 5 times more likely to become teen mothers than are young women who have these basic academic and economic assets.

As the founder of the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research (1990), Pittman testified before Congress about the danger of prematurely writing off thousands of young people by setting expectations too low. “Reducing youth problems was critical,” Pittman explained, but “problem-free is not fully prepared.” She emphasized that communities as well as their leaders had to be as articulate about what they wanted young people to do, be, and become as they were about what they did not want them to do. Pittman argued that by focusing on development (making sure that every young person has the supports and opportunities needed to be fully prepared and fully engaged in learning, work, and community life), [Page 834]communities could lay the groundwork for reducing or preventing problems. This became the cornerstone of what is now known as the “youth development movement.”

As the unlikely head of the President's Crime Prevention Council in the first Clinton Administration, directed by Vice President Al Gore (1995), Pittman brought an advocate's agenda to the White House. Despite the fallout from the Gingrich Congress that thwarted the implementation of the council's proposals, Pittman and her staff, led by Merita Irby (who had first worked with Pittman at the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research), facilitated a high-level working group, bringing the Cabinet's 13 department secretaries to consensus on three concepts: communities must protect, prevent, and prepare; communities must invest in young people, families, and neighborhoods; and communities must make early and sustained investments in young people from early childhood through young adulthood. Together, the council identified 273 separate federal programs that addressed violence, abuse, pregnancy, substance abuse, and delinquency and created recommendations for helping communities help youth by reducing red tape. When she left, the working group toasted Pittman as “a national treasure.”

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