This Owl Once Interned in the Fifth District. Now He Represents It.
Long before he was a city councilman, Jeffery Young, CLA ’08, was a senior looking to complete an internship required for graduation. He ended up stuffing envelopes in the office of then-Councilmember Darrell Clarke where he got his first close look at city government. In 2024, Jeffery returned to that same office, now representing the Fifth District.
By Eddy Kosik
When Councilman Jeffery Young, CLA ’08, was a senior at Girard College in North Philadelphia, one of his requirements for graduating was to complete an internship. Jeffery completed his in the office of then-Councilman Darrell Clarke, who represented the Fifth District, the very district that Jeffery now represents. The work was rarely glamorous; he remembers deleting a lot of emails and stuffing envelopes to be sent out to constituents. But it introduced him to people who would become pivotal mentors throughout his adulthood and career. The experience was transformative.
“It really opened my eyes to what was possible,” he said. "I think we have to see something before we can believe it. I saw it, and I said, ‘This is something I want to do. This is where I want to serve.’”
Jeffery Young.
Jeffery Young.
One lesson from that experience still guides his work today. “Just get to know people,” he said. “I learned at a very young age that it’s all about who you know and how you made them feel.”
Jeffery left the internship with an aspiration to go into public service. His goal at the time? “Honestly, to save the world,” he admitted, laughing. “That’s the dream. We want to live in a better society for the next generation. That’s what inspired me. As a high school student in that office, I saw that decisions were being made that would affect my life, and I thought, ‘I want to help change things for the next generation that comes behind me.’”
Upon graduating from Girard, Jeffery left Philadelphia briefly for a smaller state school in rural Pennsylvania but ended up returning to the city. “It didn’t feel like home,” Jeffery said. “There were classes where I was the only minority, and I’d never experienced that before. I felt like I had to speak for everyone from a certain culture or background.”
But when Jeffery transferred to Temple, something clicked. “It was the experience I needed,” he said. “There was a diversity of thought, culture and class. It was a great environment where you could meet all kinds of people.”
"[Temple] was the experience I needed. There was a diversity of thought, culture, and class. It was a great environment where you could meet all kinds of people.”
He enrolled as a political studies major with a focus on urban planning, drawn in part by the opportunity to learn from professors who were not only from Philadelphia, but deeply engaged with the issues affecting the city. His favorite class ended up being The Cultural Politics of Hip Hop: Jay-Z vs. Nas, a class taught by former Professor Marc Lamont Hill, EDU ’01.
“The class used hip-hop as the framework, but it was really about economics, politics, sociology and psychology. Jay-Z and Nas were the backdrop for conversations about underground economies and the societal issues that create them.”
Jeffery Young.
Jeffery Young.
Another influential professor was the late Professor David Bartelt, CLA ’15, who would go on to write Jeffery’s law school recommendation letters.
“We learned about many of the same issues I’m working on today. In those urban housing and urban studies classes, we talked about things like NIMBYism, redlining and the lasting effects of those policies,” Jeffery explained. “Now I’m working toward policy changes to address those issues that I first learned about at Temple.”
The connections that Jeffery made as a Temple student weren’t limited to the classroom. He became the manager of the women’s basketball team under Coach Dawn Staley, traveling across the country with her and the players.
Being at a school in North Philadelphia also meant that Jeffery was able to reconnect with his childhood friends who were still in the area. As the only one in that group of friends who had gone on to college, he felt a certain amount of responsibility to be an example.
“I was able to introduce them to college,” Jeffery said, “and show them what was possible.”
Nowadays, when he talks to young people about deciding where to go to college, Jeffery encourages them to consider staying in Philadelphia. He remembers being that age and believing that he was tired of the place he was from. “Looking back,” he said, “we probably should have realized that everything we needed was right in our own backyard.”
Jeffery describes himself as Temple Made. “Temple is Philadelphia’s university, and Philadelphia is a blue-collar city that works hard. I think that’s exactly the kind of students Temple attracts, and it’s what Temple gives back to the city.”
Jeffery Young with his son and other members of city council.
Jeffery Young with his son and other members of city council.
Today, Councilman Jeffery Young has young people interning in his office just as he did for former Councilman Clarke decades ago. They’re doing the same mundane work that he once did, deleting emails and stuffing envelopes, but Jeffery tries to reframe those tasks as something other than grunt work.
“I tell them, ‘You’re helping me communicate with the community,” Jeffery said. “That’s one of the most important parts of this job.”
He remembers being in their shoes and how eye-opening an experience like that can be. “I think that’s what we need to continue doing for children throughout Philadelphia: exposing them to what’s possible.”
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