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David M. Lowenstein
National Urban Fellow
Class of 2008
McLean, VA

As Special Assistant to Gary E. Knell, President and CEO of the Sesame Workshop, David Lowenstein will be working with the Workshop's newly established Joan Ganz Cooney Center for Educational Media and Research. His assignment will be to support the Center's Executive Director, Dr. Michael Levine, in his efforts to launch, develop, and grow the Center and shape its public policy and public engagement strategies.

Prior to his acceptance to the National Urban Fellows Class of 2008, Mr. Lowenstein served for more than a year as Managing Director for the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council (MMTC). In that capacity, he directed all financial, staffing, programming, and fundraising activities of MMTC. Before joining MMTC, he traveled across the country with Russell Simmons as Director of Programs for the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. Lowenstein's past work experience also includes helping launch the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, consulting with Education Technology Think Tank to pioneer NetGeneration of Youth Programs, and assisting the National Urban League over five years as Manager of the League's Technology Programs and Policy Department.

A deep commitment to mobilizing diverse community stakeholders around issues of freedom, justice, and equality has inspired his lifelong activism. While a student at James Madison University studying Political Science, he created and hosted his own weekly college radio talk show entitled “What's Going On?” in which he interviewed local and national leaders and used hip-hop music to stimulate community dialogue on critical issues. He also collaborated with community leaders and served as co-chair of JMU's NAACP chapter, and then leveraged his knowledge and relationships to found the Promised Land Coalition, which convened a national Conference on Positive Youth Development in collaboration with Keynoter Dr. Cornel West. Internships with the Black College Satellite Network in the summers of 1993 and 1994 and with Congressman Major R. Owens (NY) at his district office in Brooklyn during the summer of 1997 expanded Lowenstein's real world understanding of policy and practice and further honed his skills.

Throughout his career, he has volunteered and served on the Board of Directors of several organizations, including the Arts & Technology Academy (a charter school in Northeast Washington, DC), the Algebra Project, and Upliftment Jamaica (UJ). While on the Board of UJ, David organized and convened international technology conferences in Jamaica from 2003-2005 and established a state-of-the-art community technology center in Jamaica through corporate support.

Mr. Lowenstein remains grateful for the scope and depth of educational and professional opportunities he has had and is eager to apply his experiences and learning to effect real world change and bring honor to the NUF program and the Sesame Workshop. In the future, he hopes to continue assuming greater leadership responsibilities within organizations such as Sesame Workshop so that he can maximize his impact on the most pressing problems of our times.