Scott Brickman, Chairman of the Board

Scott Brickman is CEO of The Brickman Group, the largest commercial landscape maintenance firm in the U.S. The company, which has more than 10,000 employees and more than 170 company-owned and operated branches serving 30 states, provides quality commercial landscape services to thousands of office parks, hotels, cemeteries, healthcare facilities, retail centers, homeowners associations and schools around the country. Joining the company in 1986, Brickman progressively advanced to oversee operations in their Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast division before being named CEO in 1998 at the age of 35.

Outside the company, Brickman has served as a board member and in an advisory capacity to many organizations. including KellerMeyer Building Services, ICON, Sequel Health Services and Kratos Global Strategies. He and his company have been the recipient of numerous awards, including Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The Brickman Group was recognized with the Society of Financial Professionals’ National Capital Business Ethics Award. Brickman and his wife, Patrice, are involved in many philanthropic causes, including Neediest Kids and Visible Men, where Brickman sits on the Board, the National Center for Women and Children, Stepping Stones Shelter, the Barbara Bush Foundation Celebration of Reading and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Laura McGiffert Slover

Laura McGiffert Slover joined Achieve in 1998, shortly after governors and business leaders created the organization. As vice president of content and policy research, Laura has senior responsibility for overseeing a number of Achieve’s major initiatives. She supervises Achieve’s Benchmarking Initiative, leads its work with states on building mathematics capacity and oversees the organization’s research agenda. Laura has extensive experience reviewing academic standards and education policies in the United States and abroad, and she has written a number of reports and articles on the topic.

Before joining Achieve, Laura was a high school English teacher in Eagle County, CO, where she was involved in the district’s early efforts to develop standards and benchmark assessments. She also taught writing and composition at Colorado Mountain College.

A native Washingtonian, Laura earned a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature from Harvard University; a master’s in education curriculum and instruction from the University of Colorado at Boulder; and a master’s in education policy from Georgetown University. She is married and lives in Washington, D.C. She was a mentor and a member of the Board of Directors of Project Northstar, an organization that provides mentoring and tutoring to homeless and at-risk students in D.C. Currently, she serves on the Board of Education for the District of Columbia Public Schools.

Neil Phillips – Founder/Executive DirectorVisible Men

Neil Phillips is the Founder and Executive Director of Visible Men. He founded Visible Men on the belief that the success stories in the black male experience in the United States are drastically under told. This combined with statistical evidence that the crisis in black male youth is reaching a humanitarian crisis, inspired Neil to create Visible Men. He is determined to share the success principles, narratives, and resiliency models that have allowed many successful black men to go on to thrive with young black boys in desperate need of positive role modeling and inspiration.

Neil is presently the Upper School Headmaster at the Out of Door Academy in Sarasota, Florida. He previously served eight years as a school administrator for the Landon School, a college prep school for boys in Bethesda, Maryland. During those eight years at Landon, Neil served as the Assistant Headmaster, Upper School Head and Athletic Director. Neil is most proud of delivering on his promise to create a more racially diverse and inclusive environment at the Landon School. A child of Jamaican immigrants, Neil earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American Literature from Harvard University. He was a standout student athlete playing both basketball and football at Harvard. Neil went on to play professional basketball in Australia and Jamaica. After his professional basketball career ended, he became a certified NBA player representative. Neil founded One on One Basketball in 1991, a unique basketball skills instruction company for youth in the DC area. One on One has gone on to expand its services in eight U.S. regions and has international programming in five continents. In 1998 Neil joined a new nonprofit sports advocacy organization at Stanford University called the Positive Coaching Alliance under the leadership of Jim Thompson. Positive Coaching Alliance strives to transform youth sports so sports can transform youth. Since its inception in 1998, PCA has helped create a positive, character-building youth sports environment for more than 3 million youth athletes.

Neil is an entrepreneur, advocate, thought leader and national speaker on issues of diversity, education, character development through athletics, and the African-American experience. His passion and positivity shine through in everything that he does. Neil was recently awarded an Aspen Institute Entrepreneurial  Leadership and Public Education Fellowship, a New Schools-Venture Fund initiative. http://www.newschools.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/AspenFellows-CohortIV.pdf

Neil has been active on several local charitable boards in his community over the years, with his most recent board affiliations being with the Washington Jesuit Academy in Washington, D.C.; St. Francis Episcopal Day School in Potomac, Maryland; and The Carl M. Freeman Foundation in Montgomery County, Maryand.

He and his wife Shannon live in Sarasota, FLorida, with their two young sons. Neil has completed his second marathon and is taking up paddle boarding.

Shannon Rohrer-Phillips, MSW,Associate Director

Shannon currently serves as the Associate Director for Visible Men, where she supports the organization in the areas of: Communications, Development Initiatives, Internal Operations, VM Recruitment Campaign, Relationship cultivation, Media Management and the administering of the after school program, the InVision Project.

Shannon received her B.A. in French and Sociology from Colgate University, and her Masters in Social Work (MSW) from the Smith College School for Social Work. Shannon was an active member of the Anti-Racism Task force at Smith College School for Social Work and completed her Master’s Thesis entitled, “Family Ties, the influence of extended family in the identity development of biracial children” in 1998.

Shannon has over 15 years of social work experience including medical social work at Georgetown University Hospital in DC and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University in CA in the pediatric ICU,ER and Trauma Units. Shannon also served as a clinical social worker at The National Center for Children and Families, the largest homeless shelter for women and children in Montgomery County, MD, and has extensive experience in advocating for youth and families in the child welfare system.

Shannon continues to advocate for women and children’s issues and presently serves as a member on both the NICU and PICU Pediatric Parent Advisory Board at Georgetown Hospital University Hospital. She is married to the Founder of Visible Men, Neil Phillips and has two young sons, and two young goldfish.

Romone F. Penny, Visible Men Advisory Board

Romone Penny is an experienced tax professional with Ernst & Young LLP, one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the Big Four auditors. Romone presently works in Washington D.C. office for E&Y where he assists with Accounting Method changes for various companies, and routinely does tax and legal research and analysis to help develop solutions regarding tax controversy issues.

Before joining E&Y, Romone was a student-athlete, first at Florida State University and later at American University.  At American he was co-captain of the first NCAA tournament team in the school’s history.  Romone was a stand out student-athlete who showed a strong focus on academics while continuing to play basketball, and graduated with a BSBA in Accounting from American’s Kogod School of Business in 2008.  He continues to enjoy playing basketball in community leagues in, practicing with the WNBA Washington Mystics, and coaching youth for a program called “1 on 1 basketball” based in Washington D.C.

Since 2004, Romone has been involved with community services in his hometown of Minneapolis.  There he still serves as an Alumni Advisor of MinneapolisNext, a non-profit organization based in Minnesota that helps low-income students with educational and extracurricular needs. In 2002, Romone was selected as one of the first students in NBA star Kevin Garnett’s 4XL (For Excellence in Leadership) business program for minorities.

Romone provides further help to minority youth as an alumni member and volunteer for Management Leadership 4 Tomorrow (MLT), the premier career development institute that equips minorities with these key ingredients: skills, coaching & door opening.

Romone recently launched his first entrepreneurial endeavor with the creation of Pursuit ,an upscale men’s consignment boutique in DC with a strong commitment to community outreach.

Romone has been a volunteer with Visible Men since 2009 and has contributed insights, strategy, networking and direct mentoring to the youth served through our after school program and community workshops. His positive attitude, personal accomplishments and testimony of the power of mentoring in his own life make him an invaluable member of our team.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

George Preston Marshall Foundation

Scott and Patrice Brickman

John and Joan Vassos

United BioSource Corporation

The Matan Family Foundation

Jerome & Deena Kaplan Family Foundation

John and Andrea Rice

Mikel and David Blair

The Rohrer Family

The Tebbens Family

The Aeschliman Family

The Hoffman Family

John Davis

Sam Horn

Laura Wright

Family Support Center, Bethesda MD ( http://www.fscone.org/)

Nash Management Group, Inc