Leadership & Contributions

The leadership in ULEAD is composed of a triumvirate model. Aaron H. Willis, Mario P. Charles and Rodney W. Smith take on the main leadership roles. Each of us have distinct experiences and strengths that give us an advantage in completing our project. Our strengths lie in the skills that we bring to the table as individuals and as educators. Mr. Charles has been in the classroom for nearly fifteen years and has experience implementing Strength and Honor, a tutoring and mentoring youth based program in Ferguson, Missouri. One of Mr. Charles strengths is his ability to engage and focus on economic aspect of disparity. Mr. Charles level of motivation is second to none when it comes to giving our group the shot in the arm it needs. Aaron H. Willis, a Special Education teacher for ten years in St. Louis Public Schools. He has served as the Youth Conference Chair with 100 Black Men of Metropolitan St. Louis. He has also served as a dean of the Gentlemens Club at Long Middle and L'ouverture Middle School in St. Louis Public Schools. Aaron is the lynch pin that keeps our program together. He also has the ability to look at a problem and break it down into its foundational parts. The last of our group, Rodney W. Smith has nearly twenty years of experience in urban literacy and teaching English to Speakers of other languages on the secondary and college levels. He has taught in New York City as well as Saint Louis. He has concentrated on the attitudes of urban communities toward policing.