Brock Leach grew up surrounded by parents, older siblings, teachers and mentors who encouraged him to learn about himself and develop a sense of purpose in life. For this, he considers himself to be extraordinarily fortunate. “The intersection of what I do well, what I love to do and what matters to me has evolved over time and several careers,” he says. “It has given me the confidence that I can make some small difference in the world. As a later-in-life and unexpected child who is 18 years younger than his sister and 16 years younger than his brother, Leach is the son of an engineer for General Motors (GM). When he was four, his family moved to Germany for four years for his father’s work with GM’s Opel division. He started school in an international program with kids from all over the world and returned to the Detroit area when he was 8.  At age 14, Leach’s parents retired to Colorado where he attended a small high school in the town of Monument with a graduating class of only 78, made up of kids from all walks of life with different backgrounds.  

Leach also feels lucky to have been part of an ecumenical church community led by a minister who believed the work of the church happened outside the church. “He took a group of us teenagers on outreach projects with diverse communities—building a Head Start center with immigrant families in Conejos County, CO, one of the poorest counties in the country;  gleaning vegetables with migrant farm workers,  working in an addiction recovery center.  It left me with the impression that we can all make some difference for someone else, and how rewarding that could be.” 

Leach attended the University of Colorado Boulder with the idea that he would do some kind of human service work and worked many different jobs, including as a night janitor in the molecular biology labs,  business manager for the yearbook, night auditor at the Rodeway Inn, co-president of the student government for the College of Arts and Sciences and two years as manager of summer housing for programs that were hosted in university dorms. Along the way, he learned that he liked working with people in organizations with common purpose. He went on to attend the MBA program at the University of Chicago to learn more about organizational leadership. “There weren’t many people recruiting for human service jobs out of the MBA program so I ended up looking for jobs in consumer products/brand marketing because they offered an opportunity to learn how organizations work from all angles,” he says. He met his wife, Julie, in the MBA program, and both ended up getting jobs in Dallas, TX, Leach with Frito-Lay, a part of PepsiCo. 

“I only intended to do that for a couple of years, but then 24 went by. It was an incredible experience, and I had my roles but I discovered my first love which was leading innovation teams,” he shares. His PepsiCo career included roles as SVP Marketing at Frito-Lay,  CEO of Frito-Lay North America, CEO of Tropicana Products (which is how he got transferred to Sarasota 24 years ago) and Chief Innovation Officer for the corporation globally with a focus on improving the healthfulness of the product portfolio across divisions. After 24 great years, Leach decided it was time to quit and go to seminary to get reoriented to human service work.

As a local philanthropist, Leach has been known to fight for social justice. “I think that our greatest natural resource is human,” he explains. “We have enormous reservoirs of untapped vision, creativity and resourcefulness when we connect individual skills and calling in common purpose.  For me, social justice is principally about realizing untapped and unrecognized human potential. We need to address the common existential challenges we face together.” Recently, he was recognized for his service on the boards of Children First and Education Foundation. He chose these organizations based on overwhelming evidence that the greatest opportunity for unleashing human potential is in early childhood, and sustaining it with the involvement of parents who are supported in becoming the parents they aspire to be. 

“I got involved in Children First 20 years ago because, by design, they serve the 600 or so kids and their families most in need in Sarasota County, and they do it with wrap-around support of families—everything from comprehensive access to services they and their kids need, to parenting education, job training and employment,” he says. “James Heckman, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago won a Nobel Prize for his work demonstrating that high quality early childhood education with wrap-around support of families is the single best social investment we can make as a society.”  

He explains that he later got involved with the Education Foundation because they extend that support by helping students with the kind of self-discovery and adult mentorship that enables them to uncover their own sense of purpose and take those important next important steps after high school, and they also prioritize serving the kids and families who otherwise would not have access to those services.

Leach is grateful to be part of the Sarasota philanthropic community, one that he feels is filled with a multitude of people who recognize that they were blessed in unexpected ways—with strong support at pivotal moments in their lives and with prosperity beyond what they expected. “They recognize that we are all better off when each of us can bring our best selves to the service of all of us. Our community is suffused with people who are investing themselves and their resources in recognition of that truth in many different ways. And I would add that perhaps the greatest philanthropic contributions are made by those incredible volunteers who devote large portions of their lives to working  directly with kids, parents, and people with needs from all walks of life.  They are changing lives intimately, directly and profoundly.”

Leach has been quoted as saying “The best gift one can give to another is the gift of opportunity.”  This a reference to unleashing human potential by ensuring that everyone, especially kids have a chance to bring their best selves to the world.  Every time we deny somebody that opportunity because of who they are or where they come from we sell ourselves and our future short.

He shares that he is  especially proud to have been part of Children First’s journey from being a good early childhood program to being a nationally recognized Program of Excellence, one of only few in the country to be repeatedly recognized as excellent year after year. “The credit goes mostly to Philip Tavill, CEO, and the long-time leadership team who have never been satisfied with the status quo,” he says. “They have consistently taken well-reasoned risks to do things differently, learn from them, and take them to the next level, in the midst of continuously changing circumstances. For that team, it’s not a job; it’s an expression of knowing who they are and applying their gifts in a way that is soul-satisfying to them and benefits everyone involved.”

Having just completed a doctoral program in transformational leadership at Boston University with research focused on what it means and requires to develop multicultural and multigenerational communities, Leach believes that he will continue with the important human services work he is doing well into the future. “I’m inspired by what I learned and am currently exploring ways to share it with congregations and other types of communities, because until we can acknowledge the value of different cultures and encourage everyone to fully participate in our communities we will deprive ourselves of better possibilities.”