Building Tomorrow, Inc. Welcomes New Board Members; Michael Stayton Elected Chairman

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Indianapolis, IN – The Board of Directors of Building Tomorrow, Inc. has elected four new board members. They are Melanie Fitzgerald, Ken Kobe, Karen Jung and Jim McClelland. Michael Stayton has been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Melanie Fitzgerald is a longtime supporter of Building Tomorrow. She helped raise funds to construct BT’s 25th school, Kisaluwoku, and she has traveled to Uganda to see BT’s work firsthand. Fitzgerald is an active community volunteer with an interest in work benefitting children. She has served as President of the Children’s Museum Guild and actively has volunteered with her children’s schools.

A former Peace Corps volunteer, Ken Kobe retired as Executive Director of Barnes & Thornburg LLP in 2014. He previously served as Indiana State Budget Director, and he has held numerous board positions and governmental appointments. He serves as chairperson of the Easter Seals Crossroads Board of Directors.

With extensive experience in the technology sector, Karen Jung spent the last 11 years at ExactTarget where after nine years of leadership roles on the technology team, she shifted career paths to launch the ExactTarget Foundation, a private foundation that awarded grants to support nonprofits and programs focused on childhood hunger, education and entrepreneurship. She took a sabbatical from ExactTarget in 2008 and 2009 to work in rural Haiti. This spring, Jung launched a new foundation, Nextech, and she will serve as its first executive director.

Jim McClelland is President and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana, Inc. Throughout his career Jim has been active in the international development efforts of Goodwill Industries International and was heavily involved in starting new Goodwills in South Korea. He also has served on numerous not-for-profit boards at the local, national, and international levels and chaired several of them. He currently serves on the Dean’s Council of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business – Indianapolis, the Georgia Tech Grand Challenges Advisory Board, the Board of Governors of the Economic Club of Indiana, the Executive Committee of the Central Indiana Education Alliance, and the Urban Areas Commission of the Indiana University Public Policy Institute.

Michael Stayton, Building Tomorrow’s newly elected Board Chairman, formerly served as President & CEO of the United States Infrastructure Corporation (USIC), the largest utility contract locating firm in the United States. From 2002-2007, he served alongside Building Tomorrow Honorary Board Member Jim Morris as Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the largest international humanitarian agency in the world. Stayton is a graduate of Wabash College and George Washington University. During his tenure at WFP, Stayton made several trips to Northern Uganda to see firsthand the work of WFP in war-stricken areas.

About Building Tomorrow, Inc.
Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, Building Tomorrow catalyzes communities and individuals in support of access to quality education in East Africa. Building Tomorrow does this by empowering young people to invest their time, talents and resources in support of new educational opportunities; facilitating the construction of community-built, locally-sustained primary schools; and building the human capacity and leadership of locally-based school management teams.

In 2014, Building Tomorrow launched Educate51k, a new initiative that will enroll 51,000 out-of-school children in geographic districts throughout rural Uganda through 2019 by constructing 60 primary schools and hiring of 150 Building Tomorrow Fellows. For more information, visit buildingtomorrow.org.

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