Why We’re Here
The world needs more people who can work and lead across differences.
Our Mission
At CivicsRUs, we believe that meaningful change comes from the youth: Throughout political history young people have played a major role in bringing change to communities, schools and unions, government and corporations, nonprofits and city officials, by working together and finding creative solutions to strengthen our democracy.
Our mission is to train, support, and connect youth to become leaders who build up and protect the communities they live in by being knowledgeable and responsible about democratic processes to hold elected and non-elected officials accountable.
CivicsRUs graduates will gain a deeper understanding of how city government works, and the necessary skills to improve it (School Districts/City Hall/City Council/Mayor/Public Works/Parks & Recreation/etc). To help them reach their goals of making positive change happen, we engage them with a network of positive and influential youth leaders. There is a saying, “All Politics Is Local” and it’s very true. Our youth working together with experienced professionals will fuel positive change across the communities where change is needed the most.
Our Approach to Leadership
CivicsRUs participants learn by doing. Guided by our experienced faculty, participants actively engage with their colleagues to disrupt old patterns, build skills, and develop new ways of thinking. Our programs focus on developing and enhancing eleven core competencies for 21st century leadership:
- Self-awareness
- Integrity
- Accountability
- Critical thinking
- Communication
- Life Skills
- Diversity
- Equity
- Inclusion
- Collaboration
- Empowered professionalism
While CivicsRUs programs vary in length and duration, they also share these common features:
- Highly interactive, small-group seminars
- Activities that sharpen self-awareness, analysis, and communication skills
- Assessments for leadership competencies and styles
- Access to senior leaders for in-depth interviews and learning
- Opportunities to develop relationships and build networks
- Group projects
- Experienced faculty members
- Post-program CivicsRUs
- Alumni events and opportunities
- When appropriate, participants share their training and experiences with the community.
Check out our most recent reports to the community.
Our History
Ethan Berry started a tutoring and mentoring program in 1988 in Richmond California. He tutored young students that attended the church he attended, Bethel Temple. The tutoring and mentoring program grew by word of mouth. While attending college Ethan worked as a youth counselor at Lions Gate facility for boys and girls 5 years old to 18 years old. While working at Lions Gate facility he witnessed how much help young kids need that is not seen in public. That’s when he decided he would one day start a company to help young children get the guidance and support they need.
After graduating from college Ethan went to work in Silicon Valley as a electronics engineer and then a software engineer. He worked for a start-up company named Intuit first as a Technical Support staff, then after doing a project writing software to allow the company’s first phone switch to tally every technical support call so that at the end of the day there was a report for the QA and Product Development team to review and determine what features and functionality users of the Quicken software were complaining about. Armed with that analytic data the Intuit product development team was able to focus on bug fixing and features that mattered most to Quicken users and future releases of the Quicken software were better for customers. This lead to customers raving about the Quicken product and sales increasing by word of mouth. After that project Tom Proulx, founder and VP of Product Development gave Ethan a promotion to being Manager of the Product Development and QA Information Technology, Software engineering of device drivers, and software product build management for version control only reporting directly to Tom Proulx. This was a lot of responsibility, but Ethan thrived in it. Intuit went from approximately 75 employees to 300 and went public before Ethan went on to other start-up companies to help them grow as well.
In 1997 Ethan started his own technology consulting company and worked for technology giants like IBM, DEC, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Microsoft, and others. In 1999, while working for Wells Fargo’s Middleware Technology group leading the Y2K initiatives for the Bank, he was in a terrible car accident which caused him to be paralyzed for a short period of time. He could not work for a long time but slowly was able to get back on his feet through physical therapy and medication.
In 2005 Ethan met up with Zachary Smith, Evelyn Williams, Roy Williams, Christopher Box, and others to start a 501(3)(c) organization, Ethan Berry, Inc. (EBI); This organization is dedicated to helping youth, particularly in economically distressed areas get the guidance and support they needed through tutoring, mentoring, and life skills training to get the best education possible, graduate from high school and attend and complete college for the career goals they set.
Since 2005 the nonprofit has been providing tutoring, mentoring, and life skills training to students in the Bay Area, including Vallejo, Oakland, Hayward, Union City, San Francisco, and San Jose. The majority of the nonprofit services are in Oakland.
In 2020 something happened that pulled at the core of the nonprofit organization, the killing of George Floyd in public by a police officer was seen on video by the entire world on social media. George Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the ground and a police officer had one knee on George Floyd’s back shoulder so that he was pinned down and the other knee on his neck so it was difficult for him to breathe. It lasted 9 minutes and 29 seconds and George Floyd was died on national news video as by standards used their mobile smartphones to video record the entire incident. This was too much to bear and Zachary and Ethan decided to do something different to try to make sure systemic change would happen so no one would ever be treated like that again. After Ethan and Zac brainstorming for a few weeks it was decided that there needed to be a pivot to civic engagement. This brought on the beginning of CivicRUs.org and we launched the website in January 2021.
The goal is for all people to be civil, have equity in opportunity, education, economics, and most of all accountability towards themselves and one another in society. It’s going to take work though.
