Ron Cope’s career in youth development seems almost inevitable when you look back at his family history.

After obtaining a master’s degree in English and math, his paternal grandmother worked as a school librarian and taught students how to read. His grandfather, who had a doctorate in education, was the Dean of Men at a historically Black college in New Orleans. He moved to the Northeast to take a job at the United Negro College Fund, recruiting African students to historically Black colleges in the United States.

“They were very serious about education,” he said. “In the segregated south, they took a really serious interest in educating Black children to ensure that they could succeed in a racist society,” he said.

Both sets of grandparents ended up in Teaneck, New Jersey, where Ron grew up after his parents met and fell in love as teenagers. His aunt graduated from Rutgers University in the early 1970s with a master’s in education and ran a college bound youth program. In high school, Ron worked as a summer youth employee at the same program and learned that youth development was his calling.

“I wasn’t really a successful student. I struggled in school with reading comprehension,” he said. “Back then, they didn’t have IEPs or special education. I worked in those programs and I understood that I had these good relationships with young people. That’s what developed my belief that maybe this was something I could do.”

After college, he worked in Paterson, New Jersey for the YMCA and New Jersey Community Development Corporation. In 2010, the city of Paterson received a full-service community schools grant to transform its public schools into community schools. That’s when Ron was introduced to Children’s Aid through our National Center for Community Schools, the organization tasked with guiding the transition and providing technical assistance.

He met Sarah Jonas, vice president of Children’s Aid’s youth division, and learned about what it took to run a community school. In 2014, Ron joined the agency as a program manager to implement a model called City Connects in our community schools in Washington Heights, the Bronx, and Staten Island in partnership with Boston College’s Lynch School of Education.

“I was kind of intimidated coming from a small city to New York City,” he said.

But the staff at both the schools and the National Center for Community Schools embraced him and allowed him to grow professionally. In 2018, he became the interim deputy director of Bronx community schools and quickly transitioned into the deputy director role a year later.

“I just remember how much care and love the community school directors supported me with,” he said. “The National Center for Community Schools was my second home. They taught me so much about the field.”

Under his leadership, our Bronx community schools have become more data-driven, tracking exactly what programs and services we provide to capture what we’re doing well and where there are gaps.

Ron has also mentored new leaders who can push the organization forward and bring new perspectives.

“I think the sign of a true leader is to be able to develop and build new leaders,” he said. “Who’s going to be up next? There are a number of people that started with me that I have formed great bonds with. I’ve been able to watch them grow and that’s the best part of the job.”

Ron was introduced to Children’s Aid thanks to funding from a federal full-service community schools grant. This year, he helped secure this same grant for two South Bronx-based schools he oversees, expanding the services we can provide to children and families.

This full-circle moment reinforces his belief that working with youth at Children’s Aid is what he was meant to do.

“Children’s Aid has been a tremendous gift to me personally and professionally,” he said. “It gave me the validation of that same gift I knew I had at 14 years old at a professional level. It’s just the right place to be to continue to grow to the next level."