Mary Brown, executive director and co-founder of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, an academic enrichment program for young Black males in Washington, D.C., has been selected to receive the John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award from Georgetown University. She will receive the award on January 20 at the Kennedy Center as past of the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration.
Brown, a graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans, founded the program to provide mentors for young Blacks who lived in homes without a father figure. Over the years the program has helped more than 1,500 young boys and men. Over the past six years, 100 percent of the participants in the program have graduated from high school. In contrast the high school graduation rate for all Black males in the city is about 40 percent.
More information about the program can be found here.
I am so proud of Mary Brown. We were classmates in an Executive Education Class at Harvard University Business School several years ago. She was dynamic, energetic, and extremely committed to the mission of her program. Congratulations on a well-deserved honor.