Dara Rose joined the Wallace Foundation’s Communities Team as a Program Officer in 2005. Prior to that, she was a member of the senior management of the Partnership for After-School Education (PASE), where she co-directed its Professional Development Institute and managed the Queens Cultural Partnership for Youth, a U.S. Department model arts-education initiative in collaboration with Bank Street College. Previously, she directed youth programs at Citizens for NYC and also worked at Project Reach Youth, a Brooklyn-based agency that serves children and families.

Dara has served on a number of boards of small youth-serving non-profits and is on the steering committee of the New York City Youth Funders Network. She was a contributing writer and editor for a number of magazines and has written about teen pregnancy for Urban Latino Magazine, and about incarceration, youth organizing and other topics for Stress Magazine. Dara has been a frequent presenter and panelist on a range of out-of-school issues at meetings sponsored by organizations including Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families, the Partnership for After School Education, The After School Corporation, Bank Street College and the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers New York State Conference. She holds a master's in Public Administration from New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.