Harlem Grown gives back to neighborhood youth by rooting in community’s needs

To Tony Hillery, New York City begins in the neighborhoods he has chosen to serve. During a long career in business, he never imagined that a personal pivot would lead him to change countless lives.

“A change of life, I don’t know. During the financial crisis, I was like a lot of other people, getting impacted in business and losing business and clients. I was sitting right where I’m sitting right now, getting depressed, and I was reading about schools and underfunded schools in New York City," said Hillery. 'And that word, that phrase, just didn’t resonate. I couldn’t understand. I mean, we’re in the richest city in the world, and how do you have an underfunded school, right?”

That confusion and frustration became a turning point. Hillery traveled uptown to Harlem, volunteered at a loca