Board Of Directors

Mary Welsh Schlueter serves as Founder and President of the Partnership for Innovation in Education. Please see her background at “Founder’s Biography”.

Eve Bolton is a current President of the Cincinnati Public School Board of Education.  She served as a master teacher during her 35 years with the Wyoming City Schools, and was elected Wyoming Teacher’s Union President.  During her teaching tenure, Eve’s students ranked #1 in the Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics category across the world.  Politically active herself, Eve also served as the first woman elected to executive office in Hamilton County as County Recorder.

Launched as a Leadership Cincinnati project, Shannon Carter created Crayons to Computers, a free store for teachers.  Since 1997, C2C has distributed over $70M of new and used school supplies to more than 95,000 children in 15 counties surrounding Cincinnati.  Shannon is C2C CEO and President and is the proud recipient of the Peter F. Ducker Foundation Award for Non Profit Innovation.  The nonprofit organization has been replicated in 41 cities throughout the United States.

Terry Bayard Joyner, Ed.D. is the President and CEO of System Solutions LLC, an educational consulting company providing services to local school boards, community schools and social service agencies.   She has served as Chief Academic Officer and Director of Curriculum of Cincinnati Public Schools.   Dr. Joyner has 32 years of teaching and administration experience and notes, “Schools control the conditions that lead to student success.”

Attorney Christopher McDowell serves as a litigator and partner with Dinsmore & Shohl.   Chris has served as a military prosecutor and defense counsel for the U.S. Army in Korea, Europe, and the United States.    Mr. McDowell has an expansive interest in education and ran for the Cincinnati Board of Education in 2009.

Nolan Marx serves as a Senior Client Partner with FranklinCovey.  Over his career, he has built multi-million dollar corporations and has served as a consultant on leading franchise brands in the United States.  An alumni of Miami University, he also has performed executive studies at Harvard Business School.

Nolan has been nationally recognized as one of the top business professionals under 30, and has been honored to receive recognition from Gannett Corporation for his entrepreneurial business initiatives.

Joe Weldon is Senior Vice President, Business Development, Hylant Group a $100mm insurance firm headquartered in Toledo. Joe has started and sold two companies, most recently selling his company to Hylant. Four years after graduating from Miami University, he headed up the largest managed care insurance initiative in the country with Prudential Insurance Company of America.

Andrea Brady serves as President of Empowering Innovations, LLC and the Marketing Shop Consultants.  She is former President of the Inventor’s Council of Cincinnati and still does limited consulting with independent inventors.   She is a School Board Member for the Milford Exempted Village School District.  As a volunteer within the district, she has developed two educationally-based writing programs for sixth graders.  Andrea began her career at Procter and Gamble in brand management after receiving degrees from The Wharton School/School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jody Scharfenberger founded Campaign Data Apps in 2011, helping political candidates utilize social media to interact with voters and raise funding.  Jody is a 15-year veteran of Direct Marketing strategic applications, working for startup and Fortune 500 companies such as InfoUSA, Acxiom and MarketsonDemand.  Jody has worked with such clients as Citibank, American Express, JCrew, and LensCrafters using email data to create targeted, customer-centric marketing platforms.

Karen Messer-Bourgoin serves as a Treasury Management Analyst with the PNC Bank and has over twenty years experience in the financial services industry.  Ms. Messer-Bourgoin’s comprehensive experience on both Wall Street and Main Street, has lead her to recognize the strong need for educational reform in the area of financial literacy.

She has served on the Board of Red Bird Mission School in Beverly, KY, the finance committee at Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church, and she regularly volunteers with PNC’s Grow Up Great initiatives. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Hollins University and a Master of Science in Management from Mount Vernon Nazarene University.