Lee Rone
Chief Operations Officer

As chief operations officer, Lee Rone oversees the programs and services that Youth Villages currently operates to bring help and hope to troubled children and drives our plans to bring our proven programs to more areas of the country.

Rone is directly responsible for our intensive in-home services, residential treatment programs, group homes, treatment foster care, specialized crisis services and transitional living program, among others. He also oversees the business development and managed care and referral services departments.

He came to Youth Villages in 1992 as a summer intern while enrolled in Vanderbilt University's MBA program. Upon joining Youth Villages full-time in 1993, Rone surveyed children's agencies and officials in Rural West Tennessee to identify the most needed services in the area. The study showed a critical need for intensive in-home services to help both troubled children and their families, which led to the development of Youth Villages' MST and Intercept programs.

Rone has overseen the in-home services programs' expansion from the time the first children were enrolled in the program in Memphis in 1994. Since then, Youth Villages' family counselors have helped more than 15,000 children and families through intensive in-home services.

Rone helped lead Youth Villages' efforts to create a full continuum of care in which the residential, foster care and in-home services function under a common philosophy focusing on family reunification, permanency and long-term successful outcomes. He also helped lead the development of Youth Villages business development efforts to share this approach in other states as they seek to provide better services for youth across the country.

A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Rone holds both a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University.

Publications documenting the progression of Youth Villages' services include Rone's "Solving the Puzzle," a study of children's services needs in rural west Tennessee in 1993 which led to the development of Youth Villages' in-home services program; a chapter by Rone in Blueprints for Violence Prevention: Multisystemic Therapy in 1998, featuring Youth Villages' application of intensive in-home services within a continuum of care; and a Harvard Business School case study in 2009 on Youth Villages' expansion of its continuum of care and intensive in-home services approach to system reform.