Madeleine Steczynski, Co-Founder and Executive Director, is an East Boston resident. She founded ZUMIX in 1991 in response to the worst year of violence in the City of Boston’s history. Together with ZUMIX’s Board of Directors and Youth Advisory Board, she has grown ZUMIX from a kitchen table project into a vital East Boston community institution that serves over 1,000 youth per year.
As an advocate for the arts, Madeleine served on the Executive Committee for East Boston Healthy Boston Coalition; was one of the founding members of Cultural Connections, a three-year effort to integrate arts as part of a Sustainable Community initiative funded by The PEW Charitable Trust; and served as an Artistic Fellow for The Boston Foundation’s Arts and Audiences Initiative. She also served for three years as a Cultural Fellow for the New England Foundation for the Arts Building Communities through Culture Initiative, and as a Community Fellow for Eureka Communities Boston.
In 2006, ZUMIX was chosen as a Social Innovator for the Social Innovation Forum at MIT, the same year Madeleine was chosen by the East Boston Times-Free Press as East Boston’s Woman of the Year. In 2007, Madeleine was nominated and participated in the Salzburg Global Seminar’s Cultural Institutions Without Borders seminar in Austria; received the Canyon Ranch Be the Change Award at the Massachusetts Conference for Women; and was an advisor for the Music National Service Initiative in Washington, D.C.
In 2008, Madeleine spearheaded a development team in the acquisition and full renovation of an historic firehouse as a new home for ZUMIX. In 2009, she successfully completed a $4.6 million dollar capital campaign and moved ZUMIX into its new home. In 2011, Madeleine started a 3-year learning journey as a prestigious Barr Fellow, and ZUMIX received the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from then First Lady, Michelle Obama. In 2012, she was honored with a Berklee Urban Service Award. She served as a board member for the nonprofit Voces de Cambio from 2013-2020.
Madeleine was named one of Boston’s most influential women by the Women of the Harvard Club Committee in 2014, and was included in El Planeta’s 2016 list of the 100 most influential people in the state of Massachusetts. She currently serves as a member of the Boston Cultural Leaders Coalition, a 30+ member cohort of Boston-based cultural leaders committed to equity and racial justice. Madeleine attended Boston College, the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, and the Executive Leadership Program at Harvard University.