Lowell Overby files

Lowell Overby's work with the YMCA dates back to at least the early 1980s, when he served as a caseworker for the Indo-Chinese Refugee Services in Houston, Texas and later as a project director for the Houston YMCA. In the late 1980s he became Associate Director of Program Services at YMCA of the USA, and by 1995 his title was was Associate Director of Community Resources. At the end of 1995 he left Y-USA to become Director of Operations for the YMCA of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Overby was part of a group called Los Amigos, which started meeting in 2004 to develop a mentoring program to work with multicultural staff who were on track to become CEOs, COOs and other Senior level positions in the YMCA nationally. That program launched in 2006 as the Multicultural Executive Development Program (later MEDI) and led to other national YMCA mentoring and support programs such as EMLE (Emerging Multicultural Leadership Experience) and the African American Resource Network.