Kassa Belay currently works at the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s juvenile justice and child welfare agency. His work primarily consists of supporting partnerships between his agency, other city agencies and various nonprofit and community organizations working in low income and undeserved neighborhoods across NYC. Through his work, he often finds himself participating in initiatives that require a multi-sector approach to address complex issues regarding disproportionate minority representation in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
Kassa is also an active participant in local NYC politics, serving as the president of his Block Association, where he presides over diverse issues ranging from block parties to the balancing act known as “gentrification…Brooklyn-style.” Over the past 10 years, he has lived, worked and studied in 3 different countries, where he has carried with him a lifelong commitment to social justice and racial equality. In NYC, previous to his employment with the Administration for Children’s Services, he worked in a number of different positions at exalt, a youth development agency where he taught a course on job readiness and life skills to court involved youth and coordinated paid internships for them in fields of their interest. In Mexico, while studying Spanish, he lived in 3 different cities and taught courses on English and American culture. In Montreal, he worked with an educational enrichment program called Write Our Rhymes Down, which brought the first literacy through hip hop campaign to the city.
Kassa graduated from The New School with an MS in Urban Policy Analysis and Management in 2014. Previous to that, Kassa graduated from Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada with a B.A. (Joint Specialization) in Anthropology and Sociology. Kassa was born in raised in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain.
