Deb Hauser has been with Advocates for Youth for 30 years. She started as the Director of the Support Center for School-based Health Care, then served as Executive Vice President, and in January 2012, became the organization’s fourth President and Executive Director. Deb often represents Advocates with the media, funders and colleague organizations and speaks nationally about the interconnection between youth sexual health equity and racial and social justice.

Deb has been at the center of numerous innovations in youth sexual health, rights and justice, including: co-founding the Future of Sex Education–an initiative producing the first-ever National Sexuality Education Standards; designing an innovative HIV/AIDS prevention and testing-to-treatment program on Historically Black Colleges and Universities; launching the 1 in 3 Campaign, a 2011 ground-breaking initaitive leveraging first-person storytelling to help shatter abortion stigma; and co-producing AMAZE, an innovative series of animated, humorous and inclusive puberty and sex education videos for 10 to 14 year olds, available on YouTube that have been viewed more than 60 million times since 2016 and adapted for use by NGOs in more than 30 countries around the globe. Deb is committed to a cascading style of leadership that promotes youth activists as change agents and leaders in the field. Before coming to Advocates, Deb served as Director of Community Health Services for the City of Atlantic City where she designed, implemented, and evaluated sex education, HIV prevention, health promotion, family planning, and teen parenting programs.

Early in her career, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, implementing family planning education, oral rehydration, and childhood immunization programs. Deb is a member of the Trojan Sexual Health Advisory Committee and the CDC/HRSA Advisory Committee on HIV, Viral Hepatitis and STD Prevention and Treatment. She holds a Masters of Public Health in Population Planning and International Health from the University of Michigan.