Ben Duda is the executive director of AmeriCorps Alums. He joins the team from KaBOOM!, where he served as a senior program manager and worked closely with mayors and civic leaders in scaling their municipal engagement strategy, Playful City USA. During his time with the organization, he also worked in the office of the CEO, supporting strategic planning and board development.
Prior to joining KaBOOM!, Ben earned his master’s in public policy with a nonprofit management certificate from The Johns Hopkins University. While studying in Baltimore, Ben was a graduate assistant at an emerging innovation high school and was a Mayoral Fellow in Governor Martin O’Malley’s administration, serving six months in the planning department.
Prior to this, Ben was a teaching fellow at Citizen Schools, an AmeriCorps program. During the two-year fellowship, he led and mentored a team of middle school students in Boston Public Schools – creating curriculum in reading and math while also managing skilled volunteers in after-school apprenticeships.
Prior to joining Citizen Schools, Ben completed two years and more than 5,000 hours of service in AmeriCorps in the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) as a corps member and then team leader. While in the NCCC, he served in a dozen cities across seven states, building houses, tutoring youth, providing job readiness training and environmental impact. Ben’s disaster relief training from the NCCC prepared him to serve as a 9/11 Ground Zero volunteer in the days following the tragedy.
Ben graduated from Cornell University with a degree in industrial and labor relations. It was at Cornell where Duda heard Sen. Harris Wafford, one of the original founders and leaders of AmeriCorps, speak and first learned about AmeriCorps. Ben, a Buffalo, N.Y., native, resides with his family in Atlanta.