Co-founder and former CEO, The Levenger Company
Delray Beach, FL
Steve Leveen is the founder of the America the Bilingual Project, which delves into the surprising changes in bilingualism now taking place in the United States. He founded the project, where he hosts a podcast, the year following his 2016 Distinguished Career Institute fellowship at Stanford. He devoted his fellowship year to interviewing experts in bilingualism and the technologies impacting it. Much of this research is reflected in his 2021 award-winning book, America’s Bilingual Century: How Americans Are Giving the Gift of Bilingualism to Themselves, Their Loved Ones, and Their Country.
The America the Bilingual project is also the creator of the Conversation Corps, a grantmaking program for nonprofits engaged in helping immigrants to America hone their English-speaking skills through everyday conversations with native English speakers. For these speakers, it’s a way to support bilingualism even though they may not be bilingual. Among the recipients is the English Together program in Silicon Valley.
Steve himself is an emerging bilingual, having “adopted” Spanish a number of years ago and gaining increased proficiency. He is a frequent guest lecturer at UC-Berkeley and the University of San Francisco, among other educational venues. He has also been featured on NPR and was a guest speaker for the Interagency Language Roundtable, which serves a number of federal agencies, including the Foreign Service Institute.
Steve holds a doctorate in sociology from Cornell. He is also an alumnus of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Mass Media Fellowship Program.
Profile of Impact: Championing Bilingualism in America