Stephen is a physician and community advocate, with extensive experience in academic medicine and public health. His clinical career has spanned nearly four decades. It includes positions in the City University of New York (CUNY) Medical School as executive assistant to the dean, Dr. George I. Lythcott, and interim director of the CUNY Physician Assistant Program at Harlem Hospital Center. He has served as resident advisor, HIV/AIDS, in the United Republic of Tanzania with the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, where he supported Columbia's President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) initiative to support the development of Tanzania’s national HIV/AIDS infrastructure. He has led a number of health projects in West Africa and served on the medical advisory committee for the group, Operation CrossRoads Africa, founded by the late Reverend James H. Robinson, pastor of the Church of the Master, and a former resident of 409 Edgecombe Ave.

Stephen received his medical degree from the School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle,Washington and an MPH with a concentration in international health from the School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. He completed his internship and residency at Columbia University-Harlem Hospital Center in the Department of Medicine, under the direction of Dr. Gerald E. Thomson.

His long-standing commitment to the Harlem community’s development has been demonstrated by his membership in the Health Action Resource Center (HARC), his service on the board of directors of the Religious Committee on the New York City Health Crisis, as vice-chair of the Health Committee of Manhattan, Community Board Nine, and as chair of the Community Advisory Board of the Columbia/Harlem Hospital Prevention Research Center.

As a resident of 409 Edgecombe Avenue since 1980, he worked with the Tenants' Association to organize and prevent the building, then in New York City's Tenant-Interim-Lease (TIL) Program, from being sold to real estate developers. Stephen was president of the 409 Tenants’ Association when it purchased this landmark building from the city in 1995 to become a tenant-owned Housing-Development Fund Companies (HDFC) Cooperative.