An involved Board of Directors and Trustees encourages the administration and teachers to take risks and explore new ideas. The Biome is fortunate to have a Board of Directors wholly invested in the success of our students, our programs and the school. They challenge our teachers and staff while giving them the freedom and resources to be innovative and more deeply in tune with the students’ needs.
Brian Phillips serves as The Biome School Board Interim Chair. Brian is committed to be being a guiding force and engaged stakeholder in the continued revitalization and stabilization of St. Louis by initiating and participating in partnerships and initiatives focused on lifting the St. Louis region. To that end, he has devoted his career to community and real estate development.
He has served as the Executive Director of the Center for Redevelopment Corporation at Washington University for 20 years and prior to joining Washington University, he worked for the City of St. Louis as the Community Development Specialist / Urban Planner. During his career, Brian developed and implemented a strategic acquisition program for the development of mixed income housing in the Forest Park South East neighborhood, which resulted in the development of over 500 affordable units and hundreds of market rate units. In conjunction with Park Central Development and other community stakeholders, he developed and implemented an economic development strategy to revive the Manchester Avenue corridor.
Brian also provides technical assistance and support to various community-based organizations focused on community improvement and neighborhood development. He actively participates on numerous neighborhood committees focused on topics from urban planning, real estate / economic developments to safety and security. He has developed and managed numerous partnerships between the Washington University Medical Center and service providers dedicated to unemployment, youth services, neighborhood security and safety enhancements, and place-making / public improvements.
The Biome School is excited to have Brian Phillips’ service as the interim School Board Chair. He is involved in other community boards such as: CWE Neighborhood Security Initiative, The Grove Community Improvement District (Founder), Park Central Development Corp (Founder and Chair), the Euclid South Community Improvement District (Founder and Chair), and the Community Builders Network-Metro St. Louis.
Ellen Moceri earned her BA and MA from Washington University, with Ed.D coursework and exams completed from Teacher’s College of Columbia University. She did the research for two different dissertations, one of which required her to visit four International Baccalaureate schools in Europe to ascertain the impact of requiring community service in the International Baccalaureate diploma program. Before she could finish that dissertation, she returned to the United States from her position as principal of the Upper School at the American School of The Hague, The Netherlands, to become the principal of the Upper School at Horace Mann in Riverdale, NY. While at Horace Mann, she became extremely interested in innovations in independent schools and began research for another dissertation on the impact of a head of school on the introduction and sustainability of innovation. That research allowed her to join with John Ratte and Grant Wiggins in establishing the Independent School Innovation Consortium. As a researcher for that organization, as well as for her dissertation, she visited the top 20 independent day and boarding schools in the United States. The conclusion of her research was that heads of school do not necessarily need to lead innovation, but they must support it wholeheartedly if it is to be developed and sustained.
While taking coursework for her Ed.D at Teachers College, Columbia University, Mrs. Moceri experienced a life-changing course at the Klingstein Center, entitled “Private Schools Have a Public Purpose.” In 1990, she established at John Burroughs School, where she spent the first 25 year of her career in a variety of leadership positions – Department Chair, Director of College Counseling, Director of Studies – Aim High, a program of educational and cultural enrichment for at-risk elementary school children in public schools. After the first two years of the program’s success, she expanded it to a Catholic school, Priory.
As Mrs. Moceri concludes her 48 year career in independent school leadership and returns with her husband to her native city of St. Louis, she hopes to be able to continue to foster opportunities for at-risk students and to help independent schools develop in their students the ability for and the belief in serving their communities.
SUMMARY
Retired business owner and entrepreneur with successful experience in all aspects of owning, running and growing a medium size manufacturing company.
Metal Container Corporation , a subsidiary of Anheuser Busch Companies, Inc.
Broad experience as a member of senior management at a Fortune 100 Company.
Responsibilities included management of multi-plant manufacturing network meeting rigorous profitability and quality standards.
COMMUNITY
Ronald McDonald House. Co-Chairman of the $1.5 million Capital Campaign to build the new Ronald McDonald house. Served on the Strategic Planning board for RMH.
Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center. Served on the Board of Governors at Cardinal Glennon for 14 years.
Holy Trinity Catholic Church /School (north St Louis Hyde Park neighborhood). Served on the Development Board for the School and served as mentor and tutor for primary school students.
PROFESSIONAL
St Louis County Regional Growth Capital. Advisory board member.
Saint Louis Private Fund, Board Chairman
MoMoney Investors, Founding member and President
MILITARY SERVICE
Unites States Army, 1968-1970
EDUCATION
BS Mechanical Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, 1968
MBA, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1978
As chief behavioral officer of Maritz, Charlotte Blank leads Maritz’s practice of behavioral science and innovation. She forges the connection between academic theory and applied business practice, by elevating the use of field research to advance our understanding of human behavior in the modern marketplace. Charlotte has led programs in consumer psychology and global branding during her ten years in the media and automotive industries, including various marketing roles for General Motors. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory University, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. Incentive Magazine named Charlotte a Visionary and one of 2016’s 25 Most Influential in the Incentive Industry. In 2018, St. Louis Business Journal named Charlotte one of the city’s Most Influential Business Women. Charlotte is obsessed with experiments, ever-curious about what “makes us tick,” and a frequent contributor to PeopleScience.com.
Fred Burdell currently serves as Vice President, Project Management Office and Infrastructure Operations for Emerson’s Commercial and Residential Solutions business platform. Responsible for the Business Solutions Program Management and Infrastructure Management strategy, direction, and execution for 13 business units which represents approximately $5 billion in sales.
Fred joined Emerson in March, 2005 has vice president of Information Technology Shared Services at Corporate and had global responsibility for the delivery of enterprise IT shared services, including telecommunications, application development and hosting. In July 2010, he moved into the role of vice president of Application Delivery and had global responsibility for the delivery of enterprise applications. In May 2011, he moved into role of vice president and Group CIO for Emerson’s Industrial Automation business platform.
Fred came to Emerson from Northrop Grumman, where he spent 2 years as the Director, Software Engineering. He was responsible for the software development, enhancement, and maintenance of Northrop Grumman’s engineering, manufacturing, business, and logistics information systems. He directed a national organization, consisting of over 1,200 managers, software engineers, and database administration professionals.
Additionally, Fred was director of MIS at Naptheon, a Newport News Shipbuilding subsidiary, where he directed a Shared Services organization. He was responsible for service delivery and service management of data center operations; application development and support; hardware and software provisioning, installation, support; and telecommunications.
While at Newport News Shipbuilding, Burdell also participated in a business re-engineering effort that examined the company’s Design, Planning, Materials Management, and Manufacturing processes. The team implemented significant process changes and formed the business case to transform the company’s information system.
Fred holds a bachelors of business administration degree in computer information systems from Eastern Kentucky University. He currently serves on the Youth Learning Center Board, St. Louis Infrastructure Executive Board, and a St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative Alumni. He served on the University of Missouri St. Louis Board of Visitor from 2006 – 2008 and Shearwater Education Foundation Board from 2011 – 2013. He resides in Wildwood, Missouri and is married with two children.
Anita Shanks Cross, Esq., is the Leader of Professional Networking (part of CSG Training and Support) and is the firm’s marketing strategist and subject matter expert for networking with tax and legal professionals.
The marketing programs within Cross’ area of responsibility include tax season resources, the Professional Brochure Series, The Connection Journal, and the firm’s website designed exclusively for professionals, www.edwardjones.com/teamwork. In her role, she also shapes classroom training, web conferences, and regional branch training and individual coaching.
Cross is a 1990 graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, GA and earned her Juris Doctorate degree from St. Louis University School of Law in 1994. Prior to joining Edward Jones in 2006, Anita practiced as a business litigation attorney at a large St. Louis based law firm and served for several years as Director of Attorney Development and Legal Recruiting for Thompson Coburn, LLP, a national law firm based in St. Louis, MO.
Judy DeLuca-Ford, is President of Managing Partners, Inc. and has been working with executives and boards in the areas of executive coaching, organizational alignment, strategic planning, succession planning, executive assessment and team building since 1987. Her clients include both public and privately held organizations, as well as, not-for-profits. These clients span a variety of industries including consumer products, industrial products, financial services, wealth management, venture capital, health care, legal, pharmaceutical, technology, aviation, insurance, and public relations.
Judy prides herself on long-standing relationships and is honored that all of her work is through referrals. She has also assisted the children and friends of clients with career development, and interpersonal effectiveness.
She has a Masters in Counseling from the University of Missouri-St. Louis as well as an undergraduate degree in Sociology from the same institution. Judy is certified to administer and interpret a variety of assessment tools including the WorkPlace Big, Meyers-Briggs and Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Assessment.
Judy is proud of the Biome she and her husband built twelve years ago. It operates in the inner city of St. Louis and has provided after school and summer academy classes to over 1000 underserved children. At the Mayor’s request, they applied to become a Charter School focusing on a STEAM curriculum. She has served on many not-for-profit boards and done pro-bono work with a variety of organizations for the past 25 years.
Dr. Gamble is currently Co-Founder and CTO of Dynamic Surgical, a St-Louis based medical device company that has engineered a new class of robotic materials that can switch their strength and flexibility with the touch of a button. When coupled with flexible tools, these materials provide both dexterity and control, enabling minimally invasive procedures in the office, instead of the operating room. Over the past year, he has been integral in the company’s growth from two founders with an idea to a company that has raised over $500K, made multiple key hires, and generated essential intellectual property.
Prior to his current tenure at Dynamic Surgical, Dr. Gamble completed his PhD in the biomedical engineering doctoral program at Washington University in St Louis while being deeply involved in the entrepreneurial community in St Louis in multiple capacities. While spearheading a tissue engineering collaboration for his doctoral research focused on optimizing cell therapies for spinal cord injury, he launched a health-tech startup, SnapPEAS, bridging the gap between grocery shopping and personal health and also worked in a part-time product engineer for a local VC-backed medical device startup, Neurolutions. He simultaneously served as a strategy consultant to local startups as a two-year graduate fellow in the national InSITE program’s St. Louis chapter.
As his career has progressed, Dr. Gamble has discovered that his true passion lies not solely in technology entrepreneurship, but at the intersection between technology and community development, which he’s vigorously explored in the St Louis region. During graduate school, he served as a cohort leader within the Young Scientist Program’s Continuing Mentoring at Soldan High School, mentoring a class in STEM topics and college applications during their four-year tenure. He currently volunteers with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s pilot middle school program in Normandy, teaching mobile application development to 8th graders who would otherwise receive little exposure to that skillset and related opportunities. For over two years, he’s also been a member of Royal Vagabonds, a historically African-American men’s professional organization in St Louis, in which he’s currently building outreach efforts around creating opportunities for underrepresented teenagers to access the growing technology entrepreneurial community locally.
Dan has over 22 years of industry experience in mammalian and microbial cell processing as well as small molecule development and manufacturing. Currently, Dan leads the Gene and Cell Therapy business unit at Thermo Fisher Scientific based in St Louis and Princeton NJ. Prior to joining Thermo Fisher he worked for Patheon Biologics in St Louis leading Business and Program Management for North America. He also spent 17 years at Amgen (Thousand Oaks, Ca) in various leadership roles supporting Process Development, Operations and Business Development and Strategy. Dan holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from the California Polytechnic State University and an MBA from Pepperdine University (Malibu Ca).
Damion Jones is the Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Bayer Company within their HR Innovations Department. In his current role, Damion is responsible for outlining the inclusion strategy & partnering with business unit leaders in regions across the company’s global footprint. This includes partnering to outline the global strategic framework, implementing cultural infrastructure and recommending action s in support of the functional & regional oversight of our company culture and operations. In recent years, he has led strategic enterprise wide initiatives for Monsanto, prior to acquisition, regarding the diversity dashboard design, mentoring and Unconscious Bias training all of which have reached thousands of our leaders world-wide. Currently he is working to integrate Business Resource Networks (ERGs) strategy which exist across 6 geographies.
Prior to his current role, Damion was matrixed between Monsanto Company’s Organizational Development/Talent Management & Talent Acquisition divisions and was additionally responsible for project managing the Executive Team talent review & succession planning process. At that time, Damion was intimately involved in our corporate governance aiding updates to the Board of Directors concerning CEO/ET succession as well as global diversity.
Damion received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Morris Brown College (HBCU) and both his masters (M.S.) and doctorate (Ph.D.) from Saint Louis University specializing in the areas of both social and organizational psychology. Outside his day job Damion is frequently asked to guest lecture and lead webinars on topics of inclusion, psychology and leadership within various corporate, educational and civic institutions. In response to the Ferguson Commission Report recommendations to aid the socioeconomic stability for Black businesses within the metropolitan area the Heartland St. Louis Black Chamber of Commerce was established for which Damion was asked to sit as a founding board member. He also sits on the board of The Biome, a Youth Learning Center STEAM charter school within St. Louis City that utilizes Carol Dweck’s work on “growth mindset” to instruct students in underserved communities. He is also a frequent contributor to DiversityInc via articles, webinar facilitation and video career advice as noted on their website www.DiversityInc.com.
Damion currently resides in St. Louis Missouri with his wife Marvis, sons Simon and Aiden and daughter Genesis.
Glen is a Senior Healthcare Technology Executive with nearly 25 years of experience in Information Technology. He focuses on the strategic use of technology and data to build successful businesses. Glen has been successful in tackling high-threat business situations, turning around failed strategy and performance, and applying technology solutions to produce significant revenue and market growth. He is highly regarded as an innovative leader, with the vision to create forward-looking technologies in a rapidly changing environment.
Most recently, Glen spent over a decade as the Chief Technology Officer of Centene Corporation, managing the organization’s growth from $1B in revenue to its status as a Fortune 100 company with over $40B in annual revenue and more than 30,000 employees. At Centene, Glen led the change in Information Technology from a back-office asset to a differentiated front-line asset. He implemented care management solutions, best-in-class analytic capabilities, and competitive clinical technologies that helped Centene become the nation’s leader in low-income and government-sponsored healthcare.
Prior to Centene, Glen was a Senior Executive with Accenture Corporation where he led the delivery of complex solutions and large-scale IT transformation projects in Fortune 100 organizations such as United Health Group, Walgreens and Deluxe Corporation. At Accenture, Glen was known for leading high-performing teams developing and implementing technologies that improved client performance in business development, marketing, operations and customer service.
Complementing Glen’s experience is an educational background including an Executive MBA from Washington University in Saint Louis and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Glen is now an independent consultant working with both established and start-up companies in the healthcare industry. He is a frequent speaker at industry and technology conferences, and serves as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs and start-up organizations. Glen serves on several non-profit and corporate boards. He currently lives in St. Louis with his wife and three sons.
Mr. White had a 30 year career in the financial services industry, commencing with the First American National Bank in Nashville, Tennessee in 1971. Since joining the First National Bank in St. Louis in 1973 and it’s subsequent acquisition by Boatmen’s Banchshares in 1988, he served in numerous financial service sectors, including international, commercial and retail lending, and established a loan production office in Chicago. In 1988, upon the acquisition of Centerre by Boatmen’s Bancshares, he was President of the City Region in St. Louis for Boatmen’s, reporting to the chief executive officer. He was responsible for all retail product delivery and middle market commercial lending. From 1993 to 1996, Mr. White was named chairman and chief executive officer of Boatmen’s Bancshares of Iowa, a $1.4 billion operation with 800 employees. Mr. White returned to St. Louis in 1996 as president and chief executive officer of Boatmen’s Investment Services, its full service broker-dealer. After the Boatmen’s acquisition by Bank of America in 1997, he served in senior management positions, including Midwest regional executive of the Private Client Group.
In July of 1999, Mr. White opted for early retirement. In January 2000, he joined Fleishman-Hillard, an international public relations firm headquartered in St. Louis, as vice president in investor relations. He teamed with other Fleishman-Hillard executives managing SBC, United Parcel Services Capital, MasterCard International, Savvis Communication, and Conseco Finance.
In 2002 Mr. White became CEO of the American Red Cross St Louis Chapter, and in 2006 it became the first chapter in the history of the Red Cross to attain High Level Ill disaster preparedness. In 2008 he was named Senior Vice President of Humanitarian Services Operations for the American National Red Cross in Washington DC. He provided technical, budgeting and project support for 650 chapters across the country, and oversaw national initiatives, including Volunteer Recruitment, Chapter Quality Assurance, Compliance, Data Resourcing and Community Resilience. In June 2007, he was appointed a member of the Senior Advisory Council to Homeland Security by Secretary Michael Chertoff. He remained in this capacity for two years. Additionally he was recruited by the Critical Incident Analysis Group (CIAG) and investigated the original Anthrax murders of 2001, with CIAG reporting to the FBI and Justice Department.
In addition to his significant corporate experience, Mr. White has been involved in St. Louis community service since 1986. He has serviced on the board of directors of the Better Business Bureau, the Urban League of St. Louis, the St. Louis Zoo Friends and Variety Club of St. Louis. Mr. White was also chairman of Forest Park Forever, the organization dedicated to revitalizing Forest Park, the site of the 1904 World’s Fair, and helped launch and direct the $45 million capital campaign. He remains a member of that board. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He was honorably discharged from the United States Army in 1977.
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