Jerry Sternin: Founder of the Positive Deviance Approach

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Jerry Sternin (1938-2008) is regarded as the founder of the Positive Deviance approach. An international development practitioner, Jerry served the Peace Corps for eight years in the Philippines, Nepal, Mauritania and Rwanda, and 16 years as a Save the Children Director in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Egypt, Philippines, and Myanmar. 

Beside a stint at the Harvard Business school as assistant dean and a culinary experiment in Asian fusion cuisine in his restaurant called “Chautara” in the seventies and as Chef to the Harvard president household in the early eighties, Jerry excelled in different fields such as music and languages. But Jerry Sternin’s most endearing gift was his deep listening and being able to relate to all kinds of people from the leaders of this world to the most dispossessed. He also was the mentor to many young people and had a great sense of humor… His Jewish tribe would call him a “Mensch.”

Along with his wife, Monique, Jerry worked with communities and organizations around the world to apply the Positive Deviance (PD) approach to address problems as diverse as childhood malnutrition, female genital cutting, trafficking of girls, HIV/AIDS risk reduction, neo-natal mortality and morbidity, and school dropouts. 

Thanks to Jerry’s passion for this behavior and social change approach and his exceptional communication and training skills, the PD approach has been applied in over 60 countries around the world with support from donors such as The World Bank and UN agencies, bi-lateral aid agencies (of USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and others) and foundations such as the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson foundation. Further, the PD approach has been implemented all over the globe by several Ministries of Health and Education, and various international, national, and local NGOs. Jerry earned an MA degree in Asian Studies from Harvard University where he also served as an Assistant Dean and Advisor to Students at the Harvard Business School. Jerry served as the Director of the Positive Deviance Initiative at Tufts University where he was a visiting scholar and taught a course on the Positive Deviance approach from 2001 to 2008. 

He is also co-author of the seminal book, The Power of Positive Deviance (Harvard Business Press, 2010). Jerry was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996 UNICEF Vietnam Recognition Award, the 1998 Friendship Medal from the Vietnamese government, and the 2007 Dory Storms Child Survival Recognition Award, CORE group, Washington, D.C. 

Dedicated to Jerry and Monique Sternin for all the good work and great love they have shared with the world. In the early 1990's in Vietnam, Jerry Sternin an...