Kivin Woods

Program Manager, Year Up

Kiv is a Program Manager at Year Up, a national 501(c)3 workforce development organization committed to ensuring equitable access to economic opportunity, education, and justice for all young adults—no matter their background, income, or zip code.

At Year Up, Kiv leads the hybrid learning communities in Chicago that connects staff and students, as program participants quickly make their way into the corporate workforce through the program model. He is also a personal coach, a class instructor, and a project manager.

Kiv is a Chicago-native, from the Chatham neighborhood on the southside of Chicago, and began his professional career after college in digital marketing, advertising, & sales before getting into the broader career field of Information Technology and Project Management. He is an alumnus of the Year Up program in Chicago, and sees his program experience as a journey that catapulted his professional career after college. Not long after graduating and taking on a few IT projects, he rejoined Year Up as a staff member to continue to make a positive impact and help provide equitable access to opportunities and corporate careers that sometimes seem impossible for people from the southside, like himself.

Now in the nonprofit sector, Kiv actively works to become a better leader in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion every day, and loves to take on challenging projects within his work and outside of it, to keep himself busy.

A musician, a visual artist, an avid writer, a son, a brother, a leader, and a life-long learner, Kiv is always looking to learn, improve, work hard and have fun! He enjoys supporting his local alumni community, volunteering in the greater Chicagoland, and dedicates most of his time to his students, his family and his closest friends.