Staff

Bill Milliken,  founder and Vice Chair of Communities In Schools  is one of the nation's foremost pioneers in the movement to give young people the help they need to graduate from high school and go on to rewarding lives. 

Mr. Milliken's experiences as an urban youth leader in Harlem and the Lower East Side of New York in the 60's  led him to search for a comprehensive approach to helping young people. In the 1970's with lessons learned from the streets, he a small team developed a model program that repositioned existing community resources into schools.  

Founded as a national organization in 1977, Communities In Schools today serves over 2 million young people.

Mr. Milliken has served three U.S. presidents and has received numerous honors for his commitment to young people.  Mr. Milliken serves on the boards of Leadership Foundations of America, PathNorth, and Communities In Schools of Northern Virginia. He is the author of four books: So Long, Sweet Jesus; Tough Love; The Last Dropout: Stop the Epidemic!; and From the Rearview Mirror: Reflecting on Connecting the Dots. He received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 2007 from Bard College.

Sarah Vogt  left an early career in Marketing to pursue her passion for helping children and families living in poverty. 

 While serving as White House Liaison for Education in the Bush 41 White House, Sarah met  Bill Milliken,  founder and President of Communities In Schools (CIS) who met regularly with policy makers about the nonacademic obstacles to success for students in high poverty schools.  

Communities In Schools pioneered the movement to coordinate and deliver community based resources inside high poverty schools connecting them directly to vulnerable  students helping them to stay  in school and graduate on time.

 After the White House,  Sarah joined CIS as Director of National Public Affairs and later established state offices for CIS in Michigan and Arizona.  In 2001, Sarah and her family moved to Hong Kong where Sarah founded stix & stone hong kong, a jewelry manufacturing  and import company with a line of jewelry sold at Bergdorf Goodman in NY.  Later,  in Manila Sarah served as Executive Director of the Manila office of International Care Ministries, an organization supplying food, education, micro financing, health care and job training to over 60,000 of the poorest people living in the Philippines.  

Sarah is a graduate with Honors from the University of Virginia, and has earned Leadership and Negotiation Credentialing from Oxford University and MIT. She is a certified Meditation Teacher.

Sarah currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls in Richmond, VA.