William “Guy” Burney serves as the Executive Director of the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence for the City of Youngstown. The Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, better known as (C.I.R.V.), is a partnership of law enforcement, social service agencies, and the community to reduce violence in the city. Their mission is to create an effective delivery system to offer individuals a circle of support enabling them to choose a non-violent path in life. Guy also serves as the founder and CEO of Thrive Development, an umbrella company that specializes in teaching and development.

The Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) is a multi-agency and community collaborative effort designed to quickly and dramatically reduce gun violence-related homicides, in an effort to sustain reductions of these incidents over time within the City of Youngstown. The initiative is a focused-deterrence strategy that is modeled after the Boston Gun Project from the mid-1990s.