YLabs CEO Transition News
January 16, 2024: We have some important and exciting news for you. Today our CEO and Founder, Dr. Rebecca Hope, announced her 2024 transition from her role at YLabs. Ten years after she started YLabs with her Co-Founders and friends, Shannon Milroy, and Dr. Majdi Osman, she is now looking towards her next professional role. We are commencing our search for our next CEO with a planned transition in fall 2024.
YLabs began at the Harvard Innovation Lab in 2014 with a seed grant of $40,000 to run a project in Rwanda and only our co-founders, Rebecca, Shannon, and Majdi, to run it in their spare time. And so it all might have stayed if Rebecca hadn’t decided to take a huge leap and work for YLabs full-time in 2016. Within the year she added four new projects and three staff members. By the end of 2018, we had over 10 staff and were growing our impact.
Rebecca continued to build from there, keeping a sharp eye on the skills needed to improve the organization and increase impact on youth. She oversaw the development of the technical and design teams and wore many different hats during the early years. She did a remarkable job of stewarding the organization through the challenges of COVID, shifting the entire organization to 100% remote work, and continued to expand YLabs’ impact and revenue.
Now YLabs is a rapidly growing global organization of over 40 people and projects that have run in 18 countries reaching hundreds of thousands of youth. The organization has seen phenomenal growth in revenue and reach and our team has expanded considerably over the last eight years. YLabs in its current form reflects Rebecca’s dedication to amplifying youth power, agency, and opportunity and to building a workplace that is collaborative, inclusive, and fun.
We want to thank Rebecca for her ten years of dedication to YLabs. We could not have asked for a more intelligent, warm, devoted, creative, and caring leader for the organization. Rebecca will be missed dearly but her departure also provides an exciting opportunity for a new CEO with new skills, experience, and energy to lead YLabs as we move forward with our new strategic plan and the goal of engaging 5 million youth in the next five years.
We want to thank all of you, our supporters, partners, and friends over the years for your continued collaboration. I hope you’ll help us in our search for YLabs’ next leader over the coming months. You can expect to hear from us soon, as we share the job description and timeframe for recruitment. At that point we’d be most grateful for your support in getting the word out to your networks - this is an exceptional opportunity for an exceptional leader.
