Founder, Strategies for Youth (SFY)
Breakout Session Presenter: Policing in School
Lisa H. Thurau, of Strategies for Youth (SFY), is an attorney and an anthropologist. She is the founder of SFY, a nationally focused organization dedicated to improving interactions by expanding officers’ skills through the Policing the Teen Brain police training program, and teaching youth how to navigate interactions with police and their peers through the Juvenile Justice Jeopardy game. SFY promotes promising practices to improve public safety while reducing arrests and the high rates of youth of color being pulled into the juvenile justice system for low level offenses. Lisa has presented this approach at national police and youth advocacy venues including the National Legal Aid and Defenders Association, the National Police Accountability Project, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Interagency Summit of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.
From 1999 to 2008, at the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk Law School in Boston, Lisa served as a public policy specialist and advocate for court-involved youth. Lisa received her B.A. and Masters degrees in Anthropology respectively from Barnard College and Columbia University, and holds a law degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. In addition to working with teens in the educational and public safety context, Lisa has been extensively involved in teen pregnancy prevention efforts as the president of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy.