Assets for Colorado Youth Welcomes New Marketing Director/New Director of Training and Community Services

Denver, CO ­ Assets for Colorado Youth (ACY) is pleased to announce the addition of two new staff members. Chris McMurray is the new Director of Marketing/Communications, and Stephanie Hoy is on board as the new Director of Training and Community Services.

Coming from the private sector, Chris was most recently Director of Marketing and Strategic Business Development at Silver Plume in Boulder, where he directed corporate marketing, relationship management, and new business development. Chris will apply his expertise in new market development, strategic planning, and integrated marketing to further the implementation of the developmental asset framework in our communities. Chris previously worked as an Art Director and Creative Director with various advertising and public relations firms in Texas before moving into marketing management roles with the AMS Group of Companies.

Stephanie is the past coordinator of Aurora's Contributing Teens, a developmental asset-based leadership program for middle school students that began in 1998 with an Assets for Colorado Youth Innovation Grant. Stephanie has also been active with the Aurora Prevention Partnership, presenting asset workshops to numerous community groups and recently helping to design training workshops for King Soopers management staff on the asset framework. Prior to that, she was the community education specialist for Aurora Prevention Link, which developed the "Wrap Your Arms Around Aurora Kids" community awareness campaign.

Stephanie has worked with a number of youth organizations, prevention programs and school districts as a contract employee, trainer, facilitator, grant writer and program development consultant. Some of these groups include: Communities for a Drug Free Colorado, the Prevention Center in Boulder, the Colorado Family Center Initiative and the Denver, Aurora, Cherry Creek and Adams Twelve school districts.

"We are pleased to add the talents of Chris and Stephanie to our team," says María Guajardo Lucero, Ph.D., executive director of ACY. "Both will be key players in advancing our mission of championing change for positive youth development."

Assets for Colorado Youth provides leadership in creating positive social change in communities, for youth, throughout Colorado and nationally. ACY works with an expanding network of educators, youth-serving organizations and community leaders to advance the developmental asset framework. The asset framework is an over-arching philosophy of understanding the strengths that young people need in their lives to grow up healthy, confident and responsible. Social change based on the developmental assets framework capitalizes on youth and resources and include positive experiences, opportunities, and values that research shows contribute to youth's success. The organization began in 1997 as a statewide initiative of The Colorado Trust and became its own 501(c)(3) organization in 2000.

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