Homewood Children’s Village Selects First President and Chief Executive Officer

Pittsburgh: June 2, 2011 - The Board of Directors of the Homewood Children’s Village (HCV) is pleased to announce the appointment of Derrick Lopez, JD as its inaugural President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Lopez will be leaving his post as Assistant Superintendent with the Pittsburgh Public Schools on June 30, 2011 and officially joining the Homewood Children’s Village on Tuesday, July 5, 2011.

“We are delighted to have Derrick Lopez join our organization as its first President and C.E.O. Mr. Lopez has an incredible understanding of the strengths and needs of our community and a vision for the enormous impact the Homewood Children’s Village can have on the rebirth and revitalization of Homewood,” stated HCV Board President John M. Wallace, Jr., Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh.

Using the highly acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone as its model, the mission of the Homewood Children’s Village is to “simultaneously improve the lives of Homewood’s children and to reweave the fabric of the community in which they live”. As a comprehensive community initiative, the HCV partners with residents, faith based organizations and communitybased organizations, local and state government, the public school system, and local and national funders to transform the educational, health, social service, and physical conditions of one of Pittsburgh’s most challenged, yet most promising communities—Homewood.

“Throughout my life, I have been given many gifts and had many educational and professional experiences. Each of them has prepared me for this opportunity, and I humbly look forward to partnering with the many members of our collective Village to transform the lives of our children,” said Mr. Lopez.

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More about Mr. Lopez

For the past four years, Mr. Lopez has been a senior administrator at the Pittsburgh Public Schools, serving first as Chief of High School Reform and then as Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools. Mr. Lopez has been a key driver of many of the District’s most ambitious reform strategies, including the Districts efforts to completely reshape the landscape of the District’s High School offerings. Mr. Lopez has also served on the Board of Directors of the Homewood Children’s Village since 2009 as the Pittsburgh Public Schools representative.

Mr. Lopez, a native of Alcoa, Tennessee, received his Bachelor of Arts in English from DartmouthCollege located in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1987. In 1991 he graduated Juris Doctor cum laude from CornellLawSchool located in Ithaca, New York. He received his Masters of Arts in Educational Administration from Marygrove College, Michigan in 2002. Mr. Lopez is currently a Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, Education Policy at MichiganStateUniversity.

More about the Homewood Children’s Village

The Homewood Children’s Village, a non-profit organization first conceived in 2007, emerged out of a search to identify a replicable, evidence-based strategy to address the myriad problems that confront the children and families who live, learn, and worship in Homewood. The Village will partner with the Pittsburgh Public Schools and open the district’s first Full Service Community School at Westinghouse in the fall of 2011.

For more information on the Homewood Children’s Village, please visit

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