Upstart Corporate Team Building Firm Takes Creative Message Directly To Homeless Youths

Syncopate Partners With NYC-Based Reciprocity Foundation To Result In Digital Release of “Labor Of Love” CD

SAN FRANCISCO, How do you inspire homeless youths to careers in creative industries like design, music, advertising, PR and multimedia? For Syncopate, a San Francisco based corporate team building firm with clients like Yahoo!, Adobe and Levi-Strauss, the answer is all about the beat.

Syncopate (www.transformyourteam.com) uses the universal language of music to inspire corporate chieftains and executives to work together. Teams create their own music and produce their own records, an experience that requires people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to find productive ways to work together, rather than to search for excuses that drive them apart. Syncopate’s successes led the New York City-based Reciprocity Foundation, a non-profit organization that trains homeless youth to enter careers in the creative industries, to ask them for a hand.

On June 2, 2007, Syncopate Founder and President Thoryn Stephens, a musician, DJ, and ex-biotech scientist, traveled with a personally selected Syncopate team to the Reciprocity Headquarters in Manhattan, where they were greeted not by executives in pinstriped suits or hip business casual, but by homeless youths driven by a dream and seeking hope for their future.

“Syncopate’s role was to lead and inspire a group of disadvantaged youths that perhaps others don’t have the courage to believe in. We showed them how to take a “product to market”---to create a team name, compose songs, write lyrics and finish the tracks for the Labor of Love CD,” said Stephens. Due to be commercially released in the Fall of 2007, this CD will feature the youths’ music, which they composed, performed, and sang in styles ranging from rap to spoken word to soul and R&B, all to demonstrate not just hope but realization.

According to one Reciprocity student, the Syncopate workshop was more than memorable: “This was truly a life-changing experience; this was one of the best days of my life!” said Denis Ramirez, 19.

“We truly witnessed a transformation within our youths attending the Syncopate team building program. In an hour, they were working in teams composing tracks for a CD,” said Lesley Pinckney, VP of Talent Development, MTV Networks, one of Reciprocity Foundation’s Industry Advisors.

According to Stephens, Syncopate, which provided its services pro bono, intends to expand its outreach to nonprofits, particularly in partnership with sponsoring corporations and to continue to work with Reciprocity on a number of projects.

For more information contact:

Eve Kuhlmann
eve (at) syncopateyourteam.com

415.823.2554

About Syncopate International

Syncopate creates and produces interactive workshops for executives, team leaders and team members of leading corporations. Syncopate programs start with music, the universal language, and use rhythm and harmony, the elemental components of music, to explore individual and team dynamics. Clients include Adobe, Levi-Strauss, Yahoo!, Sony, Medtronic Vascular and Cerimon Pharmaceuticals, among others. Syncopate has been featured in numerous news publications, most recently in The New York Times. For more information, visit www.transformyourteam.com.

The Reciprocity Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Taz Tagore and Adam Bucko to enable homeless youth to permanently exit the social services system, go to college and start careers in the Creativity Economy (e.g., media, fashion, design, music, marketing, PR). Its programs address educational and professional development, leadership and integral well-being. The Reciprocity Foundation has been nominated for numerous awards for excellence in social entrepreneurship and has been featured extensively in print and broadcast media. For more information, visit www.reciprocityfoundation.org