Ten government, business, academic, and nonprofit leaders from Middle Tennessee have been chosen by Global Action Platform for a Harvard Business School leadership program convening representatives from fifteen American cities who are working across sectors to help their communities prosper.

Dr. Scott T. Massey, Chairman and CEO, Global Action Platform, and Mitch Weiss, Co-Director of the Young American Leaders Program and Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurial Management, Harvard Business School announced the 2022 Class of Nashville Young American Leaders today at a Leadership Reunion and 2022 class induction held at the Wondr’y at Vanderbilt University.  

Global Action Platform is the local partner and coordinator of the Young American Leaders Program for Nashville and the regional affiliate of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School.  The Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University is Global Action Platform’s academic partner in the relationship with Harvard Business School.

The ten Nashville leaders were selected to be a task force to build a biomedical cluster strategy for the region, using Michael Porter’s cluster models developed at HBS.  The leaders are

1.      Aaron Barrett, Senior Vice President, Ingram Barge

2.      Charleson Bell, Director of Biomedical Innovation and Research Professor, Vanderbilt University

3.      Joe Cook III, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Mountain Group Partners

4.      Robert Higgins, Vice Chairman of the Board, Greater Nashville Chamber of Commerce; President and CEO, Barge Design Solutions

5.      Eller Mallchok Kelliher, Partner, SeedToB Capital

6.      Veronica Mallett, Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative  Officer of the More in Common Alliance(MICA) and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Morehouse School of Medicine

7.      Ryan Ramkhelawan, VP of Venture Development, Start Co

8.      Manisha Shah, Regional Vice President, Behavior Health, HCA Healthcare

9.      Abby Trotter, Executive Director, Life Science Tennessee; Consultant, LaunchTN

10.  George Wilson, Assistant Director of New Venture Programs, Vanderbilt University

The Young American Leaders Program grows out of a deep concern and a great hope shared by Global Action Platform and the Harvard Business School’s ongoing project on U.S. competitiveness. The concern is that the local, shared resources which drive American prosperity are not keeping pace with global standards. U.S. workforce skills, schools, and infrastructure, for instance, are not improving fast enough or, in too many cases, are deteriorating.

As our research shows, these trends are causing an unsustainable divergence in the U.S. economy: working- and middle-class Americans are struggling, even as firms and individuals who can tap global opportunities are thriving. Prosperity is being generated but not shared as broadly as desired.  The COVID pandemic has underscored these challenges and reinforced the need for collaboration and inclusive prosperity,  The Young American Leaders Program is designed to prepare local leaders in Nashville and across the country to address and reverse these trends.

The hope of YALP springs from the local level. In cities and regions across the country, local policymakers, businesspeople, nonprofit leaders, educators, clergy, and others coming together across sectors to build skills, improve schools, restore infrastructure to build a foundation for economic growth and shared prosperity.

Ten leaders from fifteen cities across the U.S. are selected by senior community leaders in those cities to participate each June in an intensive case study workshop on urban and rural regional collaborations and strategies for economic resilience.  Other participating cities include Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Miami, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, among others.  The program was launched to develop leaders who understand cross-sector collaborations for shared prosperity and can implement them more effectively and spread them more rapidly than in the past.

“Global Action Platform is committed to advancing local innovation cluster economic growth for shared prosperity,” notes Dr. Massey.  “We are pleased to be the regional affiliate of Porter’s Institute at Harvard and to be collaborating with them on the Young American Leaders Program and other projects.  Through this collaboration, we hope to help enable emerging and established local leaders to work together for the shared growth and prosperity of our region in today’s global economy.”  Linda Peek Schacht, executive coach and Founding Director, Andrews Institute for Civic Leadership, Lipscomb University, is an advisor for the Nashville program, which receives ongoing local program support from Global Action Platform and its 2022 sponsors, which include Gold Sponsors:  HCA Healthcare, Ingram, Vanderbilt University; Silver Sponsors: ATT, JumpstartNova, and the Scarlett Family Foundation, along with a number of individual donors.

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Nashville leaders who have participated in the Young American Leaders Program in the previous years include (titles based on currently available information from the internet, which may be subject to more recent changes):

2015

Jon Ayers, Executive Vice President, Ayers Asset Management

Landon Gibbs, Managing Partner, Altitude Ventures

Caleb Graves, Director of Business Development, Staffing as a Mission, LLC

Penny Judd, President, PennAvenue Strategies

Stacey Levine, Founding Director, Healthy Parks Healthy Person, Dickson City Councilwoman

Shaka Mitchell, Tennessee Director, American Federation for Children

Laura Moore, Chief of Staff, Office of the CEO, Obama Foundation

Gabe Roberts, Founder and CEO, The Roberts Consulting Group

Melissa Waddey, President, Ambulatory and Operations Group, LifePoint Health (Deceased)

Marcus Whitney, Founding Partner, Jumpstart Health Investors, co-founder, Nashville Soccer Club

2016

Agenia Clark, President, Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee

Lucia Folk, President and CEO, The Change Agent-cy

Clay Jackson, Jr., General Manager, Sonder, Inc (Moved to Texas)

John Lowry, President, The Lowry Group

Lonnell Matthews, Davidson County Clerk, Davidson County Juvenile Court

Mendy Mazzo, Corporate Senior Vice President, National Business Development, Skanska

Tim Ozgener, President and CEO, Oz Arts

Renata Soto, Senior Fellow, Advanced Leadership Initiative, Harvard University; Founder, Mosaic Changemakers

Mario Avila, Director, Turner Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Business, Vanderbilt University

Leslee Alexander, Former Executive Director, Tennessee International Trade Center, Tennessee Small Business Development Center

2017

Jeff Albee, Vice President, Director Digital Solutions, Stantec

Samar Ali, Research Professor of Law and Political Science; Co-Chair, Project on Unity and American

Democracy, Vanderbilt University; President and CEO, Millions of Conversations

Kate Chinn, Vice President and Head of Community and Civic Engagement, AllianceBernstein

Lesia Crumpton-Young, Provost, Morgan State University (Moved to Maryland)

Hank Ingram, Business Development Director, Ingram Industries

Joelle Phillips, President, AT&T Tennessee

Jay Turner, Managing Director, Marketstreet Enterprises

Caroline Randall Williams, Writer-in-Residence, Vanderbilt University

D. J. Wootson, Principal, Titus Young

2018

Monica Clayton Fawknotson, Executive Director, Nashville Sports Authority

Dr. Alex Jahangir, Medical Director, Vanderbilt Center for Trauma, Burn, and Emergency Surgery

Peter Thompson, Vice President Wealth Management, Regions Bank

David Hanson, Managing Partner, Hanson Wells Partners

Elizabeth McAlister, Owner, Speak Spanish Nashville

Wendy Thompson, Vice Chancellor for Organizational Effectiveness, Tennessee Board of Regents

Henry Hicks, President and CEO, National Museum of African American Music

Karen Thompson, AVP, Regional Community Engagement; AVP, Corporate and Enterprise Initiatives; Chief of Staff to President/COO, HCA Healthcare

Andres Martinez, Director of Policy and Communications, Conexion Americas

Laura Berlind, Executive Director, Global Adaptive Leadership Network

2019

Harry Allen, Co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer, Studio Bank

Joe Flynn, AVP, Community Engagement, HCA Healthcare; President, HCA Hope Foundation

Andrew Goldner, Founding President, GrowthX

Nathan Green, Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations, Vanderbilt University

Tony Niknejad, Policy Director, Office of the Governor

Martha Silva, Co-Executive Director, Conexion Americas

Beth Seigenthaler Courtney, Managing Partner, Southeast, Finn Partners

Malika Anderson, Chief Program Officer, Instruction Partners

Lisa Purcell, Senior Vice President for External Affairs, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Joyce Searcy, Founding Director of Community Relations, Belmont University

2020 (Suspended due to COVID)

2021

Andrea Blackman, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County

Ashlee Davis, Global Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Ancestry

Bonnie Dow, Dean of Academic Initiatives, College of Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt University

Brian Hassett, President and CEO, United Way of Greater Nashville

Mike Molinar, General Manager, Big Machine Music

Joanne Pulles, Vice President, Community Engagement HCA Healthcare; President, HCA Healthcare Foundation

Tara Scarlett, President, The Scarlett Family Foundation

Lissa Smith, Cannon Pastor, Christ Church Cathedral

Michael P. Thompson, Executive Director, JP Morgan

Marcie Allen Van Mol, President and Founder, MAC Presents

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SPONSORS

Gold

 HCA HEALTHCARE

INGRAM

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

Silver

 ATT

JUMPSTARTNOVA

SCARLETT FAMILY FOUNDATION

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Alumni, donors, and friends of YALP

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