Stanley S. Litow is IBM’s Vice President of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs and President of IBM’s Foundation. Under his leadership, beginning in 1993 IBM has been widely regarded as the global leader in Corporate Citizenship, and praised for societal and environmental leadership, labor practices, and civic leadership. At IBM, Stan Litow organized and led three National Education Summits at IBM for the President of the United States, the nations Governor's, CEO's and education leaders. He manages IBM's citizenship efforts across 170 countries around the world
Under Mr. Litow, IBM has developed innovative voice recognition technology to help children and adults learn to read, a humanitarian virtual supercomputer to speed research on cancer and AIDS, and new digital imaging technology to improve water quality. Mr. Litow helped devise IBM’s Corporate Service Corps, a corporate version of the Peace Corps, to train and deploy over three thousand of IBM’s future leaders on our one thousand community development projects across nearly 40 countries in partnership with major international development agencies; the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, which is helping more than 140 cities worldwide become more effective. Under his guidance cities have improved their emergency response systems, transportation and water quality efforts; and the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), a grade 9 through 14 schools initiative to transform U.S. education and strengthen America’s economic competitiveness by connecting education to jobs. President Obama praised P-TECH in his 2013 and 2014 State of the Union addresses, and visited the first P-TECH school in 2013. P-TECH also has been profiled as a Harvard Business School Case Study, as a TIME Magazine cover story and in a PBS special. Currently there are over 60 P TECH schools across six states and countries outside the US with plans to scale to over 100 schools within the next year. Mr Litow also developed a virtual supercomputer, World Community Grid, that has provided massive computer power valued at over $100 million dollars to researchers around the world leading to improvements in critical health problems, like childhood brain cancer. He created an innovative way to help government and not for profit organizations manage the social safety net through the use of advanced data analytics and has pioneered the use of Watson or Cognitive Computing to create a personalized coach for teachers in partnership with a global network of education influencers.
In addition to responsibility for many innovative programs in the Citizenship space, Mr. Litow has created an innovative model for supply chain management which has spread across US and global information technology companies, has improved IBM's environmental footprint and diversity programs as well
Mr. Litow is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at major conferences on philanthropy, education and corporate leadership in the U.S. and around the world. He has served as Chair of the Governor’s Panel on Common Core Education Standards, on the President’s Welfare-to-Work Commission, on the President's Urban Affairs Council, on the boards of the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative, The Citizens Budget Commission, and the Albert Shanker Institute.
Currently, he also serves as a Governor’s appointee on the board of the State University of New York, the nation's largest public university system where he chairs its Community College Committee.
A prolific author, Mr. Litow has published articles, book chapters and commentary in such outlets as: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the Bush Center Blog, Corporate Responsibility, CRAIN’s New York Business, Education Week, HBS Working Papers, The Huffington Post, the MIT Innovations Journal, Newsday, The New York Times, the New York University Annual Survey of American Law, U.S. News & World Report, The Yale Law Journal and publications of the American Academy of Sciences.
Mr. Litow is the recipient of the Council on Foundations’ prestigious Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking. He also has been recognized by the Anne Frank Center, the Coro Foundation and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, and has received the Urban Visionary Award from the Center for an Urban Future. Mr. Litow has twice been voted “CEO of the Year” by Corporate Responsibility Magazine, and IBM’s efforts to improve American education have won the company two Ron Brown Presidential Awards for Corporate Leadership.
Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Litow served as Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools from 1989 to 1993, the nations largest school system, where he helped bring the concept of "small schools" to scale along with the nations first gender diversity curriculum in the early grades. He negotiated collective bargaining agreements with 30 different bargaining units and created management reforms that helped the schools and city to increase funding support for schools during a difficult financial climate.
Mr. Litow also was the founder and CEO of Interface, a nonprofit think tank, which he created in 1974 and led through 1989. Interface created innovative policy reforms which were adopted by New York City and State including the Urban Park Ranger program.
Mr. Litow served from 1969 to 1973 as the Executive Director of the New York City Urban Corps managed out of the Mayor's Office in New York City, which was the largest urban internship in the nation placing over 10,000 students a year from 150 colleges and universities in paid internships with City agencies.
Mr. Litow is a graduate of New York University.