Photo of Neil Phillips

This column is about three things: real leadership, common-sense solutions and believing in the potential of everyone.

I recently enjoyed conversations with two leaders in our community who epitomize and embrace all three. Their ideas and their results renewed my optimism for a brighter future in spite of the noise we are hearing in the news.

Last week, a group of Gulf Coast Community Foundation supporters joined me for a virtual conversation with Neil Phillips. Neil is founder and CEO of Visible Men Academy, a remarkable charter school in Bradenton for boys who live in poverty. He also leads Visible Men, a success network for Black men and boys, and speaks nationally on minority education, character development, and youth empowerment. Neil is a treasure in our community.

We invited him for a frank talk on race relations and leading young men to confidently face an uncertain world. At the heart of VMA’s approach is love. We learned how VMA first helps boys recognize their value and their sense of self. From there, they can acquire the skills needed to lead successful and satisfying lives.

One of our donors asked what’s the most important thing to build up and support children from impoverished families. Neil offered two. “The first is love,” he said. “If love is not present, none of this works.

“The second thing is high expectations. Low expectations are dooming these children. We’re making the mistake of assuming that where you come from is where you will go. Until we can elevate expectations for these students, we will not be pulling them up. Believe me, the thing we see is they are eager to meet those high expectations.”

Young boys come to VMA with attributes like resilience, toughness and creativity—many, for example, take on parenting roles at very young ages. “These are wonderful, positive, success-breeding attributes,” Neil said. “We start to develop the conviction in our boys that they will be successful because of who they are, not in spite of who they are.”

There’s a reason VMA calls its students “suns,” Neil said. “Because we know they shine brightly.”

Expanding to our wider community, we discussed how to become a society that really appreciates and values one another. Neil reminded us “no growth comes without discomfort, without awkwardness, without some risk.” But his advice: keep persisting. “It’s who we are at our best that will enable us to overcome differences,” he said. “The ‘human value’ issue is where this originates and where our path to progress is.”

Earlier this summer, we held a similar conversation with Gulf Coast supporters and Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight. Sheriff Knight also spoke frankly, about community-police relations and criminal justice reform. The highlights of this conversation were the  advanced programs that our Sheriff’s Office has implemented to transform jail time from punitive to restorative.

Programs like the Recovery Pod for addiction issues and Re-entry Pod for community reintegration focus on responsibility, rehabilitation and opportunity. They also breed self-worth and success. Sheriff Knight said many of his volunteers in the Recovery Pod are people who benefitted from the program themselves. For inmates who didn’t have role models and have made bad choices, “We’ve become the father figures they get to talk to,” he said.

“The most important thing we’ve done is our Navigator positions,” he added, referring to a program that Gulf Coast Community Foundation helped the Sheriff’s Office launch this year. These Navigators are employees of the Sherriff who build relationships with inmates while they are in jail and then maintain these relationships after their release. The key success of this program is helping former inmates navigate all aspects of reentering our community. “When they’re feeling down and are going to slip back, the Navigators are the ones they’ll call,” he said.

I’ve shared two examples of leaders who are finding new ways to help us move forward as a region. We need leaders like this. Leaders who provide common-sense solutions. Leaders who set high expectations. Leaders who believe in the best of everyone.

Mark S. Pritchett is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

Photo of Neil Phillips