Rick Miller

Rick Miller is the founder of THE INTERSECTION CONSTRUCT, a private consulting firm that offers a wide range of services within the education, juvenile justice, child welfare, behavioral health, recreation, and other youth-serving sectors, institutions, and organizations.

Rick Miller is also the founder of Kids at Hope, an international child and youth development initiative and movement that studies family, school, and community cultures to better understand the dynamics of success and failure.

He is also a professor of practice at Arizona State.

Rick has spent 52 years in the field of child and youth development as a practitioner, researcher, professor, public policy expert, and author. Included in Rick’s career is that he served as executive director of the City of Phoenix’s Violence Prevention Initiative. In that role, Rick led and successfully raised over $100,000, establishing ASU’s first Violence Prevention Academy.

Rick’s research is revolutionizing the understanding of child and youth development and cultures. His work has been introduced in 24 states, the District of Columbia, and four countries. 

The Arizona Supreme Court adopted his work to redefine the juvenile justice system from risk to hope. The American Academy of Pediatrics published a book on youth resilience which cited Rick's work

He is the author of three books and two comic books, including “Youth Development: From the Trenches” and “The Soul, Science, and Culture of Hope.”

He has received Arizona State University’s Visionary Award; the City of Phoenix's Martin Luther King, Jr. Living the Dream Award; and the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge's George Washington Medal.

Among his many keynotes, workshops, seminars, and symposiums, Rick delivered a TEDx Talk. Rick lives in Phoenix with his wife, Esther. They have two children and four grandchildren.

Other Achievements

• While serving as the education director and later executive director of two Boys and Girls Clubs in California and later in Arizona, Rick’s programs received six Reader’s Digest National Awards for Program Excellence.
  
• Rick envisioned and led fundraising efforts to build and fund two separate full-service dental clinics to serve underserved and uninsured children, one in California and the other in Arizona.
  
• While serving in Washington, DC, as Boys and Girls Clubs National Government Relations Director, Rick created a Congressional Breakfast to recognize young people from around the country. The Congressional Breakfast became the single most recognized and coveted youth recognition event in US Congress history. Rick was recognized by the Carter administration for his support of the Youth Employment Plan and later recognized in a speech by President Ronald Reagan as part of the President’s Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives. Rick also wrote one of the first white papers that helped create the task force.
  
• While serving as President and Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix, Rick directed, oversaw, led, and managed multiple campaigns, resulting in the building of five multi-million-dollar clubhouses. No debt was assumed to pay for the building of the clubhouses.
  
• In his 15 years, the Phoenix Club’s annual operating budget grew from $400,000, serving 5,000 children, to over $4 million, serving 15,000 deserving boys and girls. The club’s endowment grew from $1 million to over $4 million.
  
• Additionally, a new Boys and Girls Club of Metro Phoenix administrative office was secured, along with a youth leadership retreat on 10 acres of land in Show Low, AZ.
  
• Rick has served as a consultant to four university deans within Arizona State University’s College of Human Services.
  
• Rick has been quoted in major newspapers around the world, including the “Wall Street Journal,” for his advocacy and knowledge about youth and hope. Equally, he has had five op-ed columns published. His article, Science Untangles the elusive power and influence of hope in our lives, was published by “The Conversation,” an independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of experts for the public good, and distributed to thousands of news outlets worldwide.
  
• Rick has delivered countless national, regional, state, and local keynotes, presentations, seminars, strategy sessions, and workshops to a wide range of audiences.