Two decades inside NYC youth programs.
I’m Hector Cuevas, a senior youth-development leader with two decades building and running programs across New York City. Today I lead a large, multi-site portfolio of youth and community programs, the Beacon, Cornerstone, community-school, and youth-development models many of my clients run, across 20+ NYC sites and multimillion-dollar public budgets.
I started where most of my clients are now, running a single site, and spent two decades learning how to align strategy with what actually happens on the ground. Now I bring that to other organizations as workshops, done-for-you systems, and planning.
Crain’s New York Business 40 Under 40 · 2025
Where this experience comes from.
Every workshop and system I offer traces back to a role where I had to make it work, with real staff, real funders, and real young people counting on it.
Citywide program & operations leadership
Senior leadership · 20+ sites
Set the strategic vision for youth and community programming across a large, multi-site citywide portfolio, Beacon, Cornerstone, community-school, and youth-development programs.
- Built and managed multimillion-dollar public and private budgets across a portfolio of contracts.
- Led managers and frontline teams across many sites; coached site leaders on budgets and operations.
- Launched partnerships that expanded access to free, industry-recognized learning for older youth.
- Grew programming and helped bring in significant new public funding for community-safety work.
Multi-site program leadership
Director-level · 12+ sites
Led program quality across more than a dozen sites and a portfolio of public and private contracts.
- Kept programs audit-ready and in strong standing with city youth-agency funders.
- Moved every program to remote delivery within weeks in 2020, keeping services running through the pandemic.
- Built benchmarking and evaluation approaches to measure and improve program performance.
Program systems & compliance leadership
Senior management role
Oversaw a portfolio of city, state, and federal contracts and the systems that kept them compliant.
- Built the onboarding, compliance, benchmarking, and budgeting systems that programs run on.
- Presented as a facilitator at a national youth-development conference.
Community center leadership
Beacon community-center model
Ran the day-to-day operations of a Beacon community center, supervising and developing a full site team against program goals and outcomes.
After-school program leadership
Middle-school after-school
Recruited, trained, and developed frontline staff and partnered with school leadership to design programming around students’ and families’ needs.
Education, licenses & memberships.
The formal grounding behind the practical work, and the licenses that keep youth programs compliant.
Education
- MS, Organizational Leadership
CUNY Lehman College - BA, Business Management & Administration
CUNY City College of New York
Certifications & Memberships
- Leadership Fellows NY Alum, Executive Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership
- NYC Open Data Week, panelist on community-safety program impact
- UConn, Family Development Credential
- Community Research Exchange, High Performing Managers Initiative
Licenses & Certificates
- NYS OCFS, School-Age Child Care (SACC) License Holder
- NYS OCFS, Summer Camp Permit Holder
- Trauma-Informed Care
- Child Abuse & Mandated Reporter
- Basic Life Support Pro & First Aid
- 15 Hours, Foundations in Health & Safety
Put 20 years of experience on your team.
If your program needs the kind of systems, leadership, and clarity I spent two decades building, let’s talk about the fastest way to get there.