For Immediate Release
July 8, 2008
Contact: Nick Lorenzen 781-348-4239
Quincy, MA – The Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the largest philanthropy in New England devoted exclusively to education, has hired Mary Sylvia Harrison as Vice President of Programs and Delia Arellano-Weddleton as a Program Officer.
“We are very pleased to welcome Mary and Delia aboard. We look forward to benefiting from their experience and passion for education as we continue our work to transform public education into a system that ensures the large majority of citizens are prepared to succeed in a changing world,” said Nicholas C. Donohue, President and CEO, Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
Ms. Harrison is the former President and CEO of The College Crusade of Rhode Island, which she joined in 1994. Under her leadership, The College Crusade became the state’s most comprehensive college-readiness and scholarship program for students in low-income urban school districts. Program participants have significantly outperformed their peers in the urban districts with regard to high school graduation and college-going rates.
Ms. Harrison served on the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education from 1994 to 1999 and represented The College Crusade as Core Partner with the Providence Public Schools in a Carnegie Corporation-funded High School Redesign initiative. Prior to joining The College Crusade, Ms. Harrison was for six years Executive Director of Times2, a non-profit organization that provided math and science enrichment programs for African American, Hispanic and Native American children in grades K-12, and that now operates as a charter school.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Harrison established the state's first shelter for runaway youth at the Rhode Island Department of Community Affairs; led Rhode Island's participation in a national demonstration project for minority single parents living in poverty while directing the Women’s Educational Equity Act Project at the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Rhode Island (OIC); and established the first lobbying office for a Native American Nation while working at the Citizens Advocate Center in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Harrison is a member of the Rhode Island Urban Education Task Force and serves on a number of boards, including those for the Paul Cuffee Charter School and The Met School. She earned a B.A. from Villanova University in 1974 and a J.D. from Antioch School of Law in 1981.
Ms. Arellano-Weddleton is a first-generation American with more than 20 years experience in social services and community outreach, primarily in low-income, immigrant communities.
Prior to her hiring as a Program Officer, Ms. Arellano-Weddleton worked at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation as a Fellow in the Associated Grant Makers Diversity Fellowship Program. Before her time as a Fellow, she was the Coordinator of the Newcomers and Neighbors Center in Framingham, Massachusetts that was conceived to respond to the needs of the town’s large immigrant community.
She previously worked for six years as a Bilingual Family Advocate at the South Middlesex Opportunity Council’s Head Start program, where she worked with English, Spanish and Portuguese speaking families. At this position, she also developed a very successful program that focused on promoting fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives.
Ms. Arellano-Weddleton begin her career in Social Work as a counselor for the Navy Family Services Center in Norfolk , Va. where she was responsible for designing, implementing and overseeing a new program that provided counseling for Submariners and their families.
Additionally she has dedicated much of her career to teaching families the importance of literacy both through the Head Start program and other literacy programs that were offered to families living in shelters.
Ms. Arellano-Weddleton serves on the board of directors of the Metro West Free Medical Program in Sudbury, Massachusetts and oversees the social service component of the program. She holds a Bachelor’s in Sociology and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania.
The Nellie Mae Education Foundation is the largest philanthropy in New England that focuses exclusively on promoting access, quality, and effectiveness of education. The Foundation provides grants and other support to education programs and intermediary organizations in the region to dramatically improve underserved students' academic achievement and to investigate and promote high quality, varied approaches that allow students to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary in the 21st century. The Foundation also funds research that examines critical education policy issues and public understanding about education in order to better inform efforts to improve education. Since it was established in 1998, the Foundation has distributed nearly $83 million in grants. Currently, it primarily provides funding through five strategic initiatives: Early Learning, Pathways to Higher Education, Time for Learning, Adult Learning, and Systems Building. For more information, visit www.nmefdn.org
