Lisa Thurau

Lisa is the Founder and Executive Director of Strategies for Youth. A lawyer by training, she served as a juvenile justice attorney, policy specialist, and youth advocate prior to founding SFY in 2010. The impetus for SFY came in the aftermath of a lawsuit she filed against the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) in 2004 on behalf of arrested youth, 90% of whom were African American. During the course of the lawsuit, she learned that none of the MBTA police had any training working with youth. With Dr. Jeff Bostic, then Director of School Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, she initiated a training for 180 officers to increase their skills in policing large groups of teens in public transit areas. These efforts led to an 84% reduction in juvenile arrests by the MBTA Transit Police. SFY started working with two agencies in two states in 2010.

Today, SFY is a nationally renowned organization, offering training for law enforcement, model policies for law enforcement interactions with youth, as well as educational interventions for youth, as well as efforts to promote reforms at the front end of juvenile justice systems in 25 states.  Lisa currently focuses most of her attention on advocating for state level adoption of developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed, and equitable policies and standards governing police/youth relations in law enforcement agencies and state/federal departments.

She regularly consults with foundations, federal and state education and justice departments, police malpractice and juvenile justice attorneys on best practices for law enforcement/youth interactions, writes and appears on the media frequently on these issues, and speaks before police, youth advocates, and legal audiences. Her articles and commentary have appeared in USA Today, Education Week, The Crime Report, and The Hill, among others, and SFY has been featured in articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Marshall Project.

Lisa is a graduate of Barnard College, holds a Masters degree in Anthropology from Columbia University, and a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.