John Bess

John Bess is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Valley Inc. and a graduate of the Not-For-Profit Institute of the Columbia University Business School. He was also a recipient of the Revson Fellowship at Columbia University.

Bess was also a recipient of the 1995 Measure of a Man Award from The New York Conference of the NAACP and was selected as a recipient of WCBS-TV's 1997 Fulfilling The Dream award. He has been described by the New York Times as a "hell raiser" on behalf of young people and was one of 27 New Yorkers selected as "Community Heroes" by the United Way to carry the Olympic Torch through New York City on its way to the Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Bess founded The Valley Inc. as a comprehensive human service agency for young people in 1979 in order to serve African-American, Latino, Caribbean and Asian youth in New York City’s five boroughs. Under his leadership, the agency has provided services to more than 100,000 at-risk youth aged 6 to 24 as well as their families. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo called The Valley, "The best youth program in New York State" and Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, called The Valley, "The best youth agency in the nation."

Bess serves as the national consultant for The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Rebuilding Communities Initiative in five urban cities regarding youth development. He has conducted workshops for the staffs of Nickelodeon Television in New York and Los Angeles and in the summer of 1995, he headed a delegation to Rome where he facilitated workshops and training during a 10-day youth conference. Bess and The Valley were also profiled in the 1992 PBS documentary "Neglect Not the Children."

Bess has received the Increase the Peace Award, the Black Agency Executive Award, the Ellen Lurie Community Service Award for Leadership from the Community Service Society, the Governor's Decade of the Child Award, the Leavy Award from the Freedoms Foundation for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education and a Community Service Award from the Minisink Branch of the New York City Mission Society. He served as co-chair of Children's Week for former New York City Mayor Dinkins in collaboration with the UNICEF World Summit on Children, and was an ambassador to Dinkin's official delegation to South Africa.

Bess sits on other boards including the Partnership for After School Education, the Commonwealth Local Development Corp., the National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention, The National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS and the Fountain For Youth. He is also a member of the Advisory Boards for the California Wellness Foundation, Def Dance Jam Workshop, and Wadleigh Secondary School.