Mary-Jane Stevenson

Mary Jane joined City Year in 2013 as Executive Director of City Year Los Angeles, where she directs a $14 million budget, staff of 65, and between 225 and 300 AmeriCorps members serving in 29 schools throughout Los Angeles and Inglewood Unified School Districts. In her role at CYLA, Mary Jane manages a 30-member board of prestigious philanthropists, business executives, and community and education leaders. During her tenure, a six-year analysis found that City Year L.A. helped schools recover more than 16,000 days of instruction for more than 11,000 students, keeping them engaged in their educational communities and saving LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) more than $1 million in attendance revenue. Last year, 100 percent of principals and assistant principals surveyed agreed that CYLA impacted systemic issues of educational equity. Many of those principals and teachers championed CYLA’s latest 5-year contract with LAUSD, which nearly doubled its price per corps member from $6,800 to $12,500.

For the past year, Mary Jane has also served as interim Western Regional Vice President, where she collaborated with her fellow executive directors and their impact and development teams to respond to the COVID-19 disruption with innovative approaches such as virtual town halls, virtual service days, and visionary statements of partnership for districts and schools.

Before joining City Year, Mary Jane was the California State Director for Barack Obama’s 2012 Presidential re-election campaign and the California Field Director in his 2008 campaign. During the four years in between those elections, she was the California State Director of Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee’s organizing arm known as President Obama’s Field Team, where she built a multi-layered organization to support the President’s legislative priorities through grassroots organizing, earned media, digital strategy, and lobbying. In 2010, she developed and managed a joint fundraising committee with CA Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaign, where she directed an integrated field, digital, press, and political program which contributed to turning the State House from red to blue, retained a US Senate seat, and held all 34 Democratic seats in the US Congress.

In 2013, Mary Jane founded and directed a political action committee (PAC) in support of Eric Garcetti for Mayor of Los Angeles, where she directed campaign strategy for fundraising, research, field, and media.

Mary Jane began her career as a print and television reporter covering high-profile legal stories such as the impeachment trial of President Clinton, and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, as well as the War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Mary Jane holds a master’s degree in international communications from American University School of International Service and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Journalism. She lives with her husband, Alex, and twin 17-year-old high school seniors, Natalie and Joey, in Santa Monica, California.