Michael B. Marks, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, University at Albany (NY) and Research Associate, Youth Advocate Programs (YAP®), Inc. will share his professional insights as a panelist at the 50th Anniversary YAP® Making Change Happen Summit. The half-day Summit and YAP® Making Change Happen Awards Gala take place Nov. 6, 2025 in Philadelphia, PA.M
Founded in 1975, YAP® partners with youth justice, child welfare and other systems to deliver community-based services as a safer, more effective, and less costly alternative to putting young people in trouble or crisis in corrections or residential care facilities. The national nonprofit applies principles of its evidence-based model to also help cities reduce neighborhood violence.
Dr. Marks has served over 40 years as an executive, manager and practitioner working in the juvenile justice and child welfare field. He works with organizations to develop and evaluate innovative community strategies designed to enhance permanency, family connections and social capital for youth transitioning from foster care or re-entering community from child welfare and youth justice placements.
He specializes in multi-site case study research and implementation and model fidelity studies, using mixed method data collection approaches including surveys, interviews, focus groups, and direct observation of program activities. Since earning a Ph.D. in 2009, Dr. Marks has expanded his activities to assist social entrepreneurs, social investors, NGO leaders, and statutory officials supporting the development and understanding of community-level responses that reach upstream to address health, educational and social challenges.
He has helped develop and evaluate community currency systems in the US and internationally; social innovations that offer new organizational models that utilize unused individual and community assets and social enterprises that fill supply chain gaps, combining profit with alternative social and planet sustainability principles and metrics. Dr. Marks is a member and conference presenter at the Social Work Innovation Network (SWIN), the International Research Conference on Social Enterprises (EMES), the International Social Innovation Research Consortium (ISIRC) and the Research Association on Monetary Innovation, Community and Complementary Currency Systems (RAMICS).
Learn more about YAP® and its 50th Anniversary events at YAPInc.org.
