Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi

Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi currently serves as interim agency head of AmeriCorps, the federal agency tasked with elevating service and volunteerism in America. Before this role, she served for more than 14 years as the deputy director of AmeriCorps State and National, the agency’s program that provides grants to a wide range of local service programs which engage tens of thousands of Americans in intensive community service each year.

Before her appointment at AmeriCorps in 2010, Bastress Tahmasebi served as the vice president for program investment at YouthBuild, a global nonprofit organization that works with opportunity youth to earn a high school diploma or GED while they learn construction skills by building low-income housing. She has held positions as a search consultant at Isaacson Miller, a firm that specializes in recruiting leadership for the nation’s civic infrastructure; the executive director of Campus Outreach Opportunity League, a national nonprofit organization that harnessed the energy of college students to engage in their communities; and a policy associate at Youth Service America, a global nonprofit that activates young people to find their voice, take action and acquire powerful civic skills as they solve problems facing their communities and was the primary organization that advocated to Congress for the creation of AmeriCorps.

Bastress Tahmasebi holds a Bachelor of Science in nursing from the University of Michigan and a Master of Business Administration from Babson College. She lives in Washington, DC and her favorite pastime is hanging out with her two grandkids even though they live in Columbus, Ohio, home of the Ohio State University.