Sonia Toledo
Writer, Speaker, and Social Entrepreneur
Sonia is a writer, speaker, and social entrepreneur whose primary focus is 21st-century youth development, emotional intelligence training, and organizational culture change. She holds a PhD in education (with the focus on global training & development) and has more than 25 years of experience working in the after-school field, building quality programming for students in elementary through high school. She has worked for Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCA, Children’s Aid Society, Child Care Inc., and has served as the President of NYS Network for Youth Success (formerly known as NYS School Age Care Coalition).
In 2008 she founded Dignity of Children, Inc. with the vision of creating programs that would support families holistically and help reduce inequality in education. Dignity of Children helps young people develop 21st-century skills necessary to succeed in the modern-day marketplace by providing them with the tools to become powerful, creative, emotionally healthy members of society. In 2021, after two years of piloting, Dignity of Children officially launched iDEAS Empowered by Youth - a revolutionary youth development program that includes project-based learning and workforce development designed to teach young people how to think, not what to think, find their passions early and live from the heart while working on solving problems they care about. Through this process they learn that they have a voice and that their voice matters. The goal of iDEAS is to create the first 100,000 changemakers of tomorrow.