LEADERSHIP

Dandre Murray

Dantony Chamblis

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Erik Hilliard
Board Member

Darnell Leatherwood
Board Member | Chair | ​CEO

Chad Lyles
Board Member | Secretary and Treasurer

FOUNDERS

     Darnell Leatherwood, Ph.D. is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. He also holds roles as Senior Research Affiliate at the Institute for Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies (ICQCM) at Johns Hopkins University, and Program Chair of the Critical Quantitative Methodologies SIG in the American Educational Research Association (AERA). His previous roles include National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Lecturer at the University of Chicago, Visiting Faculty at Saint Louis University, Senior Quantitative Research Fellow at the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University, and Professor of Research in the Office of Educational Research at Louisiana State University. He is also a former National Science Foundation Fellow in Advance Quantitative Research Methods at the University of Chicago/Michigan State University, Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences Fellow, Illinois Board of Higher Education Fellow, and Expert Mentor for the IVenture Accelerator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 
     Darnell is also a Faculty Affiliate at the University of Michigan’s Center for Equitable Family and Community Well-Being and serves on a number of boards, including the Matteson School District 162 Board of Education (publicly elected office) and the editorial board of The Journal of Negro Education at Howard University. As a scholar entrepreneur, he is the founder of the Black Boys Shine campaign (501c3), as well as a founding member of the Obama Foundation's My Brother's Keeper Action Team in Chicago. He also ran for US Congress in 2020 (IL-1).
     Darnell holds a PhD in Social Policy and Social Welfare, a Certificate in Education Sciences, and an MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, along with a BS in Management (concentration: Entrepreneurship) and Business Process Management from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

     Chad Lyles is currently pursuing advanced certifications in the field of information technology.  As an operative in one of his fields of interest, he is a technology analyst lead at School Sisters Notre Dame and information technology technician at the Saint Louis Zoo. He also works as a staffed mathematics tutor at Harris Stowe State University. He holds the ambition to gain public office, ideally in an educational capacity.
     Chad is motivated by his passion to establish STEAM hubs and likewise professional opportunities in underserved communities . His interests include developing comprehensive STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) matriculation education and job-readiness programs for underserved youth and cross-training adults by way of making available sustainable knowledge/training hubs in various community hot-spots – high volume areas.
     Such programs provide opportunities to become industrially knowledgeable in various foundations of programming languages for various age scopes and to become professionally certified in various information technology practices through facilitation and workshops.
     A final note, in 2016, Chad co-founded Leatherwood & Lyles, L.L.C., a social entrepreneurial business dedicated to developing underserved communities through home-ownership and gainful employment. He completed a B.A. in Applied Mathematics and a B.A. in African-American Studies while also minoring in Theology.at Saint Louis University.