Denise Coleman, Director of Juvenile Justice Programs

Community Assessment and Referral Center

Denise Coleman is the Director of Juvenile Justice Programs at Huckleberry Youth Programs in San Francisco. Ms. Coleman has led Huckleberry's Community Assessment and Referral Center (CARC) since 1999, and the center has become one of the foremost programs in San Francisco. It provides youth arrested for nonviolent crimes with a rehabilitative, supportive alternative to incarceration.

Under Ms. Coleman's leadership, CARC has supported over 5,000 at-risk youth and is a national model of excellence for community-based juvenile justice alternative programs. Ms. Coleman also serves as a national juvenile justice consultant for the Vera Institute of New York, and she was a 2008 fellow of the Women's Policy Institute sponsored by the Women's Foundation of California and a 2009 fellow of the National Institute of Out-of-School Time. She also co-chairs the Juvenile Justice Providers Association in San Francisco.

Ms. Coleman was recently selected as a KQED and Union Bank Black History Month Hero. Watch a short video about her here.