Yelena Nemoy is the Associate Director for the Opportunity Youth Forum at the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. In this role, Yelena focuses on OYF program activities and is a part of the design team for the OYF national learning agenda and technical assistance for OYF communities. Additionally, Yelena leads a portfolio of grants that support a subset of OYF communities in scaling evidence-based and promising pathways.
Prior to joining the Forum for Community Solutions, Yelena was the Project Manager at the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC). In this role, Yelena oversaw NYEC’s expanding education options work and focused on issues of policy and practice that promote quality secondary and postsecondary education and training pathways leading to living wage careers.
Yelena began her career in the youth services field at Urban Peak Denver, where she provided crisis intervention support and transitional living case management services to youth experiencing homelessness. Following that, Yelena worked in dropout prevention, overseeing an internship program at Goodwill Industries of Denver that connected high school students with quality summer work experiences.
Yelena earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pace University and a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Colorado in Denver.