DURHAM BUILT2LAST INNOVATIONS LAB - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Chairman
• President and CEO of Actualities Ltd

Anita Daniels is President and CEO of Actualities Ltd, a clinical practice offering behavioral health/wellness, sports counseling/consulting, and addiction treatment. She is also a founding member and first African American female president of the Alliance of Social Workers in Sports. Daniels is also a Licensed Forensic Evaluator for Durham County courts and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She has performed a considerable amount of work in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Prior to holding her current position, Daniels served as Director of Durham Center Access, Director of the City of Durham's Community Family Life and Recreation Center at Lyon Park, Vice President of Community Planning and Fund Distribution at the United Way of the Greater Triangle, and Assistant Vice President of United Way of Wake County. Daniels' community and volunteer experiences are numerous. She was appointed by Governor Roy Cooper to serve a three-year term (2020-2023) on the North Carolina Addictions Specialist Professional Practice Board, Chair of Durham Stepping Up Committee, President of the Durham Chapter of the Links, Inc., Chairperson of the St. Joseph's Historic Foundation Board of Directors, Vice Chair of the Durham Partnership for Children, Member of Durham Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., and Member of the Orange County Human Services Advisory Commission. She is also an author. Her scholarly articles have appeared in refereed journals and her books are very inspirational and focus on topics ranging from building capacity through philanthropy to personal testimonies of hope and courage. Daniels was recognized in Spectacular Magazine as Woman of the Year. She is also recipient of the St. Joseph's Historic Foundation President's Award. Ms. Daniels earned a Bachelor of Social Work from East Carolina University. She later earned a Master of Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Graduate Certificate in Sports Counseling at California University of Pennsylvania.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Vice President
• Attorney
• Member of the Board

Attorney Elaine Madison is the Assistant Vice President for Education and Workforce Partnerships at Duke University. She oversees all educational and workforce development for the Office of Durham and Community Affairs. Prior to her role in Education and Workforce Development, Elaine was Associate Director of DukeEngage from 2007 to 2019 and head of the University Council on Civic Engagement, which amplifies and coordinates new and ongoing civic engagement initiatives across campus. She began the Duke Community Service Center in 1993. Attorney Madison was also Associate Director for Duke's Office of Continuing Education. She holds a J.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was a Chancellor's Scholar.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Sciences

Dr. Debra Parker taught for over 20 years at North Carolina Central University. She was a tenured Behavioral and Social Sciences professor. After teaching for many years at North Carolina Central University, Dr. Parker became tenured Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Sciences, and later Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. She was also a Consultant with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction where she served as a planner for the Workforce Development Annual Conference for Special Populations. An expert grant writer, Dr. Parker's has received more than $5 million in grants from organizations including, but not limited to, the Kenan Charitable Trust, US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Labor, NC Department of Public Instruction, and NC Smart Start. Many of her grants have allowed Dr. Parker to provide programs for students with disabilities as well as teachers who provide instruction for disabled children. Moreover, Dr. Parker's work and leadership have been recognized with several accolades and awards, including the UNC Carolina Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award, Exemplary Grantsmanship Award, and an Oxford Roundtable Scholar. Dr. Parker, a prolific author, has also served on several boards and professional committees. For instance, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the Durham County Agricultural Extension Service, Edgemont Community Center Board of Directors, Partnership for Children Board of Directors, and the National Black Child Development Institute. Finally, she holds membership in several professional organizations.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Leadership Team
• Owner
• CEO / President of the Institute for Educational Research
• Executive Director and Ex - Officio Member
• Executive Director and Temporary Durham Collaborative Manager
• Owner of the Institute for Educational Research

Dr. Joyce Blackwell is owner of the Institute for Educational Research, Development and Training LLC,.. jbjohnson@built2lastinnovationslab.org Dr. Joyce Blackwell is CEO/President of the Institute for Educational Research, Development and Training LLC, an agency that works with non-profit, government and private sector partners to conduct research, develop and guide strategy, and build capacity to promote evidence-based policies, programs and practices for women and girls of color. For the past 18 months, she has served as consultant/manager of the Durham Compact, which was created by the City of Durham's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) to secure strategic partners for Built2Last-related initiatives. Blackwell is regarded by her peers as a nationally recognized scholar of African American women peace activists, and a thought leader dedicated to positive change and inclusive excellence. Her workshops on issues such as gender equality and inclusion related to African American women, student development and retention issues, and assessment in higher education have been featured at national conferences and colleges across the United States and internationally. She is recognized in the higher education community as an accreditation specialist and a student retention specialist. Blackwell earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees in History from North Carolina Central University (Durham, NC) and her Ph.D. in U.S. Women's History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC). She is also a graduate of the William R. Harvey Executive Leadership Institute, Leadership Person County, and the American Council on Education Leadership Program. Prior to serving as CEO of her own company, Blackwell worked as a tenured professor of History at both North Carolina Central University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She spent the last fifteen (15) years before staring her own business as Provost and Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at Bennett College for Women (Greensboro, NC) and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at South Carolina State University (Orangeburg, SC). She has also served as an academic dean and department chair. Blackwell has also served as Director of a nonprofit in her hometown. Blackwell is also an author and researcher. Her pioneer study, No Peace without Freedom: Race and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1975 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), is the first and only comprehensive study written to date on the national and international peace activism of African American women. She has widely published articles on African American peace activism in various scholarly journals and books. Moreover, she recently published Volume 1 of a two-volume work on the history of White Rock Baptist Church, entitled, Upon This Rock: White Rock Baptist Church's Dynamic People and Their Influence in the Durham, North Carolina, Community, 1866-2016 (Cary International Press, 2018). Volume 2 is scheduled for publication in Winter 2022. She is also a reviewer for the Journal of American History and the Journal of Peace Studies.. Blackwell has also been a frequent presenter at various professional conferences on her research interests. In addition to serving as an invited Keynote Speaker for the Globalization and Public Policy International Cross-Cultural Research Exchange Conference in Auckland, New Zealand, as well as the 28 th Triennial Congress of the U.S. Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Blackwell has served as a Content Consultant on the 2-hour documentary, North Carolina's World War II Experience. During her career in higher education, Dr. Blackwell garnered at least $22 million in grant funding to support academic initiatives. She is also the recipient of several awards and is a Mary McLeod Bethune Scholar and an Oxford Roundtable Scholar. Since leaving higher education, she has secured an additional $2.4 million in grant funding. In addition to holding membership in several professional organizations, Blackwell is an American Council on Education Executive Leadership Fellow, North Carolina Council of Independent Colleges and Universities Executive Leadership Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and a University of North Carolina Board of Governors Fellow. Design Blackwell has decided to continue her work with the nonprofit, which began in 2018, for the next year serving as its first Executive Director in an effort to ensure some continuity in leadership. She will also work with the Durham Compact until a new Manager is identified.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board

Rev. Dr. M. Keith Daniel, owner of Madison Consulting Group, LLC. (MCG) and Co-founder/Managing Director for Resilient Ventures, LLC. Resilient launched in 2019, invests in African American entrepreneurs.

Job Titles:

• Founder and Board President of the Obsidian Institute
• Program Director of Academic Year Programs

Dr. Oriana Leach is an accomplished research scholar, filmmaker, and educator who has devoted the last fifteen years to creating equitable spaces in P-20 education through research and practice. Dr. Leach attended New York University where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Film and Television Production from Tisch School of the Arts, and she went on to pursue a Master of Science degree in Education at St. John's University where she graduated with highest honors. After several years in the advertising and education sectors, she decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Educational Psychology from North Carolina State University where she graduated in 2018 after producing a ground-breaking dissertation study and related documentary film that centered the academic experiences of gifted Black girls attending predominantly White schools, and used a Critical Race Theory lens to understand how those experiences were shaped by the girls' racial identity development, parental socialization messages, and sense of belonging. Dr. Leach has served as both the Program Director of Academic Year Programs and the Assistant Director of Assessment, Evaluation and Advancement at Duke University; Data Scientist and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Consultant at The Diversity Movement; and Senior Researcher at Learn. While in the EdTech industry, Dr. Leach also co-led a major mixed-methods research project on K-12 schools around the nation whose students of color and economically disadvantaged students exceeded expectations in reading and mathematics during the pandemic school year (i.e., 2020-2021) and "beat the odds". Her research received national recognition and was even featured in EdWeek. During her stint at North Carolina State University, Dr. Leach served as a program evaluator at The William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation on a 5-year multi-million-dollar National Science Foundation grant where she led qualitative data collection and analysis efforts and disseminated research findings across stakeholders. While at North Carolina State's center for Educational Informatics, Dr. Leach managed large-scale research projects with research teams across the country, led grant writing and recruitment efforts of districts, schools and universities. Not only has Dr. Leach taught at the K-1 and university level with appointments at both North Carolina State University and Carolina University, but she has also served as a regular reviewer for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Journal of International Studies. It has also been important for her to remain active in her community and in the workplace to advance equity through concrete, on-the-ground action. Hence, she has served on several local and national committees throughout the years that are centered on equity initiatives in education, including the Equity and Innovation Committee with the Durham Public Schools Foundation and Gifted Racial Accountability Committee on Equity (G.R.A.C.E.) Committee with the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). Dr. Leach regularly conducts independent qualitative and mixed-methods research on the P-20 schooling experiences of BIPOC students and the gendered racial experiences of faculty of color in higher education. She was the lad author on a heavily cited student that documented the experiences of Black faculty and staff in higher education and the impact of racial microaggressions on their mental health using Critical Race Theory. She has also used intersectionality and identity development frameworks to examine the gendered racial experiences of women of color. She has published several book chapters, journal articles and white papers, and presented her research at several national conferences, such as the annual conferences for the American Education Research Association (AERA), American Psychological association (APA), the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). Additionally, Dr. Leach is the founder and Board President of The Obsidian Institute, a 501(c )(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to providing out-of-school enrichment programming to gifted and talented youth from traditionally marginalized communities. She is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Research, Equity, and Training in Education, LLC (C.R.E.A.T.E.), where she focuses on achieving equity in K-12 and higher education. She also hopes to use documentary filmmaking as a narrative change strategy to shift narratives and influence policy change. When she is not working or advocating for social justice in social systems, Dr. Leach is an active and involved parent. She is also a foodie who enjoys raveling to new places around the country and world. She enjoys spending time with her husband and three children.

Job Titles:

• Board Member ( County Appointee )
• Chairman, Department of Public Administration and Associate Professor

Dr. Zaphon Wilson earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from Appalachian State University in Political Science, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Clark Atlanta University. He is currently Chair, Department of Public Administration and Associate Professor, at North Carolina Central University.

Job Titles:

• Executive Administrative Assistant / Executive Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director
• Executive Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director for Built

Jessica is the newest member of the Built2Last Innovations Inc. team, joining in January of 2024. She recently graduated from Durham Tech with honors within her degree in Business Administration. Her certifications include Business Administration through both the Human Resources Management depart and Business Core program. Over the last 5 years, Jessica has served in various Customer Service roles, including serving in roles in Client Support at LabCorp. Jessica is passionate about problem solving and providing services for the roles she takes on. Her positive attitude and persistence fuel her desire to assist in any capacity. She finds inspiration from her husband and their 4 children. They are truly the driving force behind her passion. She hopes to assist in making a major impact in the community by partnering with non-profit organizations.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• Member of North Carolina Central University's School of Education Dean 's Advisory Board

John Bryson, a graduate of NC Agricultural and Technical State University and career banker, recently retired after forty-one years in the banking industry. He was last employed with PNC Bank as Vice President, Development Advisor and Relationship Manager for the states of North and South Carolina. While serving in this role, Bryson identified lending and investment opportunities around Economic Development, Affordable Housing, Community Revitalization and Stabilization. While employed with PNC Bank in community development, Bryson focused on: affordable housing; economic development; community services; and revitalization or stabilization. Bryson's other career positions have included roles in Retail and Commercial banking as well as Insurance and Investments at both RBC Bank and Wachovia Bank. While working at RBC, Mr. Bryson managed the community development lending efforts within the bank's retail footprint and supported business development as a resource and referral source. He had a working knowledge of the various funding programs for CD projects, including the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs for North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama, and the Federal Home Loan Bank AHP Program for the Atlanta District as well as other federal, state, and local programs. He is also certified by the National Development Council as a Housing Development Finance Professional. Bryson continues to serve on the boards of various organizations in the Triangle area. He previously served as chair of the DHIC (Regional Affordable Housing Developer) Board, chair of the Durham Community Land Trustees, Inc., and member of the boards of the Museum of Durham History, Inc., Duke Fuqua School of Business Minority Business Consulting Program, and the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People. Likewise, Bryson currently serves as a member of North Carolina Central University's School of Education Dean's Advisory Board, Mt. Zion Christian Church, Inc, Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, and Partners for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. Mr. Bryson and his wife, Deborah, are the owners of the first African American Montessori school in North Carolina. The Bysons own four multicultural internationally Christian Montessori schools.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• Founder and Principal of Cedar Fork Partners
• Vice President of Products and Partnerships at the Diversity Movement

Kurt Merriweather is Vice President of Products and Partnerships at The Diversity Movement of which he is also a co-founder. Merriweather is Vice President of Products and Partnerships at The Diversity Movement of which he is also a co-founder. Furthermore, he is a Certified Diversity Executive (CDE) and an "accomplished product strategist and marketing executive with a passion for helping leaders and organizations identify and implement growth strategies." The Diversity Movement, started in 2019, is a full-service diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consulting firm. With over 30 clients, Merriweather and his team of business strategists-nationally recognized TEDx speakers, and Certified Diversity Executives-"draw on their expertise in DEI and backgrounds in journalism, human rights and data analytics to help clients achieve transformative change." Kurt Merriweather is also founder and principal of Cedar Fork Partners, a Chapel Hill-based marketing and business-development consultancy. Moreover, prior to co-founding The Diversity Movement, he was Vice President of Strategy and Transformation at Walk West where he was responsible for leading the consulting and strategy practice and developing new business concepts and ventures. He has also worked in senior leadership positions for global brands such as Discovery Online, AOL Music Now, and Proctor and Gamble. Merriweather also worked as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Artist Platforms, at ReverbNation. In this latter role, he oversaw product management, sales, and marketing. He was also responsible for building ReverbNation's 4MM+ music artist community, leading groups to build partnerships with and offerings for music companies, brands, festivals, and publications. These various roles expanded Merriweather's network. Merriweather earned a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University and a M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business where he focused on strategy, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• President
• Member of the Durham Compact Board of Advisors
• President and CEO of Precious Estates
• Real Estate Broker

President and CEO of Precious Estates and a Real Estate Broker with Keller Williams Realty, Inc. pallen@built2lastinnovationslab.org Precious Allen is President and CEO of Precious Estates and a Real Estate Broker with Keller Williams Realty, Inc. She previously served as a New Homes Sales Consultant/Realtor with D.R. Horton. Ms. Allen is also a Real Estate Instructor. Furthermore, she currently leads the City of Durham's Built2Last Small Business Team. Ms. Allen is not only a real estate entrepreneur but also a community advocate serving on several City of Durham committees for entrepreneurship leadership and community development. She believes that while education is important, training and development are necessary. As a dedicated real estate instructor, she promotes out-of-the-box curricula that challenge new and seasoned agents to not only sell real estate but establish their position of value in the industry so that they are built to last. Ms. Allen's clients range from first-time home buyers, real estate investors, to builders and non-profit organizations. Her clients not only see her as their buying and listing expert but as a relational strategist. She is also a tech ambassador to her real estate constituents. She helps agents implement technological systems in business that engage and streamline workflow processes with a higher rate of productivity. Ms. Allen attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Ms. Allen serves as a member of the Durham Compact Board of Advisors and is chair of its Small Business Grassroots Engagement Committee.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• President of Droege Computing Services, Inc

Tom is as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Resilient Ventures, LLC, which delivers access to capital, networks, and expertise to companies that are ready to scale. Tom is the president of Droege Computing Services, Inc. a software development and IT services firm founded in 1985. Tom has built more than 30 enterprise systems including Auction Management, Inventory and Purchasing Systems, Patient Care Systems, and Toxicology.