Lee Staples
Graduating class: 1963
Inducted into Hall of Fame: 2008
Hall of Fame Category: Lifetime Achievement
Dr. Staples has been involved in community organizing for the past 40 as an organizer, supervisor, staff director, trainer, consultant, coach, and educator with a wide variety of grassroots change groups. His work has addressed social issues related to welfare rights, public and private housing, childcare, mental health, labor (hospital workers), public health, community building, ethnic, violence, youth development, neighborhood, and statewide community organizing. He has delivered training programs for social change organizations across the United States, as well as in the Balkans (Croatia and Bosnia), Denmark and Israel.
Currently Dr. Staples is a Clinical Professor at Boston University School of Social Work, where he teaches, practices, consults and publishes in the areas of grassroots organizing, task group dynamics, leadership development, and collective empowerment. He sits on the Executive Board of the Chelsea Collaborative, which does community organizing that focuses on affordable housing, environmental justice, immigrant rights, parent involvement in public schools, and youth violence. He consults with a wide variety of social change organizations; participates in a number of professional boards, committees, and academic associations; and has presented scholarly papers at numerous national and international conferences.
He recently published the Second Edition of Roots To Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing (Praeger, 2004); and with his colleague, Melvin Delgado, he has just written Youth-Led Community Organizing: Theory and Action (Oxford, 2008)
At present he is doing research for a forthcoming book on the International Clubhouse Movement, which develops community support for recovering mental patients.
Lee has been married to Louise Staples for 39 years, and they have a son, Joshua (24) and a daughter, Rebecca (20).