Teach For America—South Carolina announces new advisory board members

Teach For America—South Carolina announced the appointment of David Haythe, senior advisor at Morgan Stanley and Company; Tommy Preston, director of national strategy and engagement at Boeing South Carolina; Mark Richardson, owner and manager of MAR Real Estate LLC; and Ansel Sanders, president & CEO of Public Education Partners of Greenville County to its advisory board. Advisory board members help to oversee the vision and strategy of Teach For America—South Carolina, which seeks to ensure all students have access to an excellent education.

“We are thankful for the diversity of experiences and perspectives that our new board members will bring to our efforts,” said Josh Bell, executive director of Teach For America—South Carolina. “With the insight of our board, we can continue and expand our ambitious work in developing leaders who make a difference in the life trajectory of South Carolina students.”

David Haythe, Mark Richardson, Tommy Preston, Jr., Ansel Sanders

David Haythe is a Senior Advisor at Morgan Stanley and Company. A native of Lynchburg Virginia, he attended and graduated with honors from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. After graduation, he attended the London School of Economics and Political Science in London, England and was awarded a Master of Science in industrial economics in 1969. Between 1969 and 1971, he taught economics at Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont. Haythe began his business career on Wall Street in 1971 with a private partnership firm in London, England. He joined Morgan Stanley in New York in 1975. Five years later, the firm initiated an office in London where Haythe helped and was responsible for the expansion of the equity distribution footprint of the organization throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Additionally, Morgan Stanley initiated a private banking business in the same area. Haythe participated as a senior banker and served on the board of the Swiss entity Bank Morgan Stanley, AG, in this effort until returning to the United States in 2015. Alongside his work with Morgan Stanley and Company, Haythe serves on the advisory board of the Department of Finance of the College of Charleston.

Mark Richardson is owner and manager of MAR Real Estate LLC, a commercial real estate company that specializes in development and ownership of single tenant triple net, office buildings, and multi-tenant centers. Previously, Richardson served as director of business operations and president of the Carolina Panthers football team from their inception in October 1993 until August 2009. During his tenure with the Panthers, he served nine years on the prestigious NFL Competition Committee, and his evolution as a league leader continued as a member of the NFL Broadcast Committee and the NFL Network Operations Committee. Richards earned an undergraduate degree in business administration from Clemson University in 1983, where he played football on the 1981 Tiger’s national championship team and ACC Championship teams in 1981 and 1982, and he earned a master’s of business administration from the University of Virginia in 1987. Richardson serves as chairman of the Trevillian Cabinet for Clemson University’s College of Business and Behavioral Science, and as a member of the executive committee of the Will to Lead campaign at Clemson. In October 2013, he was appointed as a life trustee to the Clemson University Board of Trustees. His other business interests include co-owner of the Carolina Panthers, co-owner of Bank of America Stadium, co-owner of the Novant Health Charlotte Marathon, and co-owner of 50 Bojangles’ restaurants in North Carolina and Virginia.

Tommy Preston, Jr. is the director of national strategy and engagement at Boeing South Carolina where he focuses on regulatory, public policy, and grassroots strategy. Most recently, he practiced law at Nexsen Pruet, LLC in Columbia, where he represented companies and organizations, including Boeing, on economic development, public policy, and regulatory matters. He was also the chair of the firm’s diversity initiative. A native South Carolinian, Preston graduated cum laude from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in political science, where he was also a Gates Millennium Scholar and student body president. He later earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of South Carolina School of Law. A voice for improving education in South Carolina, Preston was selected by The State Newspaper as one of the 20 Under 40 Leaders in the community and received the Columbia Chamber’s Young Professional of the Year Award. Preston is the founder of Cocky’s Reading Express™ (CRE), a statewide initiative dedicated to improving literacy in the state, and was selected to assist with the launch of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a program to support the growth and success of young men of color. In addition to his work on education and youth issues, Preston is active in the American Bar Association where he currently serves as national secretary for the Young Lawyers Division and as a Fellow for the American Bar Foundation, as well as with his alma mater as the youngest and first person of color to serve as president of the University of South Carolina Alumni Association.

Beginning his education career through Teach For America, Ansel Sanders is the president & CEO of Public Education Partners of Greenville County (PEP), a local education foundation that supports, advocates for, and invests in public education in Greenville. He previously held the position of associate director. Prior to joining PEP, Sanders completed the Doctor of Education Leadership program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. During his doctoral program’s residency year, he served as the director of partnerships for the Tennessee Achievement School District, an innovative model for improving Tennessee’s lowest-performing public schools. He also played a leading role in the development of Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School, which opened in 2014, and its school-wide STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) design. Previously, Sanders was an assistant administrator at Mauldin Middle School before serving as the founding Director of A.J. Whittenberg Elementary School of Engineering in 2010. He holds a master’s of arts in Teaching at John Hopkins University.
Other board members include Debra Sonkin, Founder of Search Advisory Group and board chair; Patricia Crawford, former SVP of Enterprise Diversity and Inclusions at Wells Fargo Bank; Charlene Keys, Area Vice President of Time Warner Cable South Carolina; and Terry Richardson, Partner of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman, LLC.

A member of the South Carolina education community since 2011, Teach For America–South Carolina has recruited talented college graduates and professionals to make a lifelong commitment to educational equity, starting with serving as a teacher in a high need classroom for two years. As leaders in the classroom, Teach For America teachers make an immediate impact on the lives of their students. The organization is seeking to accelerate community progress in education through its collective impact of corps members and alumni. This year, 100 corps members and 275 alumni are impacting students from inside and outside of schools in the Midlands, Pee Dee, and Lowcountry.

About Teach For America
Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing the challenges of poverty. Founded in 1990, Teach For America recruits and develops a diverse corps of outstanding college graduates and professionals to make an initial two-year commitment to teach in high-need schools and become lifelong leaders in the effort to end educational inequity. Corps members are teaching today in 53 urban and rural regions across the country. They join more than 12,000 alumni educators in a teaching force of 19,000 and an overall community that is 53,000 strong, working across every sector to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education. Teach For America is a proud member of the AmeriCorps national service network. For more information, visit www.teachforamerica.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.