Founders and Team
Founders
Darnell Leatherwood is currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. A quantitatively trained interdisciplinary social scientist, his research interests include education, social inequality/policy, and identity formation. Darnell is a recent recipient of the Certificate in Education Sciences from the Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences Fellowship Program through the University of Chicago Committee on Education, was awarded the 2020 Allison Davis Research Award, and was named to the Chicago Scholars' 35 under 35 list for 2020. He is also an Illinois Board of Higher Education Fellow.
Darnell currently serves as a Young Scholar on The Journal of Negro Education Editorial/Advisory Board out of Howard University in Washington DC, on the Advisory Board of the Chicago State University College of Education, as an Expert Mentor for the IVenture Accelerator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as a founding member of Thrive Chicago & President Barack Obama’s My Brother's Keeper Alliance Action Team, and was coordinator/chair of the Workshop on Education at the University of Chicago from 2016-2018. He also founded the Black Male Educators Alliance of Illinois and is on the project team for the National Science Foundation Method Training Institute in STEM Education Research at the University of Chicago (partnered with Michigan State University). Darnell and his work has been featured in multiple media outlets nationally. He holds a M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a B.S. from the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. To learn more, because the aforementioned list of activities is not exhaustive and may not be completely current, follow him on LinkedIn and IG. |
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. 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 as well as acts as a board member to For Posterity, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing youth violence and providing mentoring/community service in the city of Chicago and across Illinois. He completed a B.A. in Applied Mathematics and a B.A. in African-American Studies at Saint Louis University while minoring in Theology. |