Alex Breen

Alex Breen is a Senior Policy Associate on the Improving Practices & Outcomes Team. He supports CSW’s efforts to strengthen the capacity of community-based organizations to improve results for low-wage workers through the use of data, feedback, and effective strategies and practices. Alex will support CSW’s Workforce Benchmarking Network (WBN), where he will facilitate peer learning cohorts and provide technical assistance in a variety of cities, create national virtual peer events, and support the development and expansion of the WBN.

Alex has extensive experience in workforce development, including managing, scaling, and implementing holistic workforce programming at community-based organizations and intermediaries. He values the use of qualitative and quantitative data for continuous improvement, which he has used for program evaluation, measuring performance, and streamlining quality.

Prior to CSW, Alex was the Director of Growth and Innovation at the Stanley M Isaacs Neighborhood Center (SINC) in East Harlem. As part of the organization’s leadership team, he oversaw program development, monitoring and evaluation, and sectoral employment programming. In the first two years, Alex raised more than $1.15 million for the organization’s workforce development and community health programs. Prior to joining SINC, Alex was an Assistant Director at Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation (Seedco). There, Alex managed a portfolio of workforce development, financial empowerment, and family support programs, and scaled Seedco’s young adult sectoral employment program. While at Seedco, Alex also collaborated with Social Finance to pilot pay-for-success workforce development models driven by employee retention.

Alex received his Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Lake Forest College and is a 2020 CORO Workforce Systems Leadership Program alumnus.