At the end of 2003, Lois Holzman, along with colleagues Lenora Fulani and Edmund Gordon, launched The Research Center at the All Stars Project, Inc. Fulani leads the All Stars Projects’ youth programs (she is co-executive producer of the All Stars Talent Show Network and co-director of the Joseph A. Forgione Development School for Youth), and Gordon is director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The All Stars Project is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that promotes human development. Its innovative performance-and development-based intervention model is the basis for outside-of-school educational and performing arts activities for tens of thousands of poor and minority young people. In addition, the All Stars sponsors community and experimental theatre, develops leadership training and pursues volunteer initiatives that build and strengthen communities. 

The Research Center is designed as an open environment for reflexive researchers, educators and policy makers to explore existing and emerging understandings of human activity, human learning and human development. Greater understanding of these human capacities and their interrelationships is essential in order to intervene on the failures of our education and human services systems; most particularly on, the low academic achievement of some ethnic minority and low-income youth.