Center for Creative Partnerships
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND ADVISORY COUNCIL
Peter Chapman
Vice-Chairperson
As CEO of Urban Policy Innovations LLC, Peter advises economic development organizations, private institutions and government agencies on strategies and programs designed to strengthen and diversify regional economies and promote the revitalization of under-invested communities. An accomplished economic and community (re)development strategist and practitioner with over twenty years of executive leadership experience in several markets, he is presently leading engagements on behalf of clients in the Midwest and the Eastern Caribbean. Peter was previously the founder and Executive Director of a U.S. Treasury Department-certified Community Development Financial Institution, and a senior member of the housing and community revitalization practice group at global consulting firm Abt Associates in Cambridge, MA, where he was the lead researcher and author of a national case study exploring the economic impact of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's HOPE VI and Mixed Finance Programs. Peter also previously led the portfolio of economic and community development agencies for the City of Denver, Colorado, under then-Mayor John Hickenlooper, and served as Executive Vice President for the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, where he facilitated 4,600 new jobs through the recruitment and expansion of major domestic and foreign companies, thereby contributing to the renaissance of Detroit's central business district. (B.A. in English, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT; Masters of Public Policy with concentration in macroeconomics and urban planning, Tufts University; Graduate Studies in real estate finance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)
Col. Alexander Conyers
Alexander is the President at South Carolina State University. He is an experienced leader with over 28 years in the U.S. Army where he led complex organizations in areas of recruitment, retention, training, human resources, finance and budget, safety, and accreditation. His assignments included tours at the Pentagon and South Korea, Canada, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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He previously served in Washington, D.C., in the Senior Executive Service (federal government just below Presidential Appointees) as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army, a two-star general equivalent. He culminated his military career in 2016 after rising from private to colonel as the leader of the Army’s largest military police brigade with over 3,600 soldiers and civilians across four military installations. He remained intimately involved with SC State, serving on the Board of Visitors: Chairman of the Student Relations Committee for the National Alumni Association, and on the Criminal Justice Advisory Committee. He was featured as a 2016 Honoree on the Stellar Alumni Calendar and was inducted into the ROTC Hall of Fame and, most recently, served as the President of the Washington, D.C., Chapter of the National Alumni Association. (B.A., Criminal Justice, South Carolina State University; M.A., Corrections, University of South Carolina; M.A., Public Administration,
Troy University; FBI National Academy)
BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND ADVISORY COUNCIL
Emory Shaw Campbell
President, Gullah Heritage Consulting Service, Conducting Gullah Heritage Tours on Hilton Head; Director, Penn Center, Retired, Organized Heritage Days Celebration; Inaugural Chairman, Federal Gullah Geechie Corridor Heritage Commission; Appeared on 60 Minutes, The Today Show, a PBS Special: Family Across the Sea and C-Span's Washington Journal; Awards include: Governor's Award for Historic Preservation, Carter G. Woodson Award for Civil Rights, Lifetime Achievement Award, Association of African American Museums. His essay, A Sense of Self and Place: Unmasking my Gullah
Heritage was published in African American Life in Georgia and the Low Country and he authored the guidebook - Gullah Cultural Legacies and translated the Bible into Gullah. (B.S. in Biology, Savannah State University; M.S. in Engineering, Tufts University; Honorary Doctorates-Bank Street College, NYC and University of South Carolina/Beaufort)
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James (Jim) Evans
Jim is a Minister, activist, legislator, and NFL athlete; President of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance and is proactively involved with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) as the National Community Engagement Coordinator. He was a Member of the Mississippi House of Representatives for 24 years where he was a member of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus. He was formerly Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Jackson Advocate Newspaper and President of the Jackson, Mississippi Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, While an athlete at South Carolina State University, he earned first-team honors for All-SEAC and All-MEAC and was named a Kodak College Division All American. He was drafted by the New York Giants into the National Football League and inducted into the South Carolina State Athletic Hall of Fame. He is a certified Contract Negotiator, NFL, and a Sports and Entertainment Agent. For 28 years, Jim was a radio talk co-host for Straight Talk. (B.A., South Carolina State University; Doctor of Theology, Clay Theological Seminary)
BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND ADVISORY COUNCIL
William C. Hine
Bill is an author and educator. Now retired, he taught history for over 40 years at South Carolina State University. He has published essays in Phylon, the Journal of Southern History, Labor History, and Agricultural History. He is the co-author, with Darlene Clark Hine and Stanley Harrold, of the widely adopted college textbook, The African American Odyssey, now in its seventh edition. He is also the author of South Carolina State University: A Black Land-Grant College in Jim Crow America. (University of South Carolina Press, 2018). (B.A. Bowling Green State University; M.A. University of Wyoming; Ph.D., U.S. History, Kent State University)
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Kenneth Folden Hodges
Ken is the Pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, Beaufort, South Carolina; Owner, of Lybensons Gallery and Studio specializing in Sea Island Gullah Geechee History and Art, and authentic African and African American Art. He was a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. He introduced legislation to name the bridge over the Combahee River in Colleton and Beaufort Counties, “The Harriet Tubman Bridge." He launched and chaired the Harriet Tubman Monument Initiative; established Robert Smalls Burial Site as a part of the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom; and served as a member of the ministerial delegation to Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. He established the Gullah Geechee Visitors' Center, LLC; chaired the South Carolina Microenterprise Study Committee; sponsored legislation that established South Carolina Microenterprise Development Act; chaired Environmental Affairs II Sub-Committee and chaired Colleton County Legislative Delegation. He was formerly a member of the Bennettsville City Council and the Beaufort County Economic Development Board. (B.A., Clark College; M.Div., Morehouse School of Religion of the Interdenominational Theological Center)
Sasha H. Levites
Sasha H. Levites is a partner in the Entertainment Group, where she focuses on motion picture, television, and digital media work, representing talent, production companies, and intellectual property owners.
Ms. Levites handles a broad range of transactional entertainment and intellectual property matters, with a focus on advising clients in the film, television, and digital media industries. She represents writers, directors, producers, documentary filmmakers, motion picture studios, distributors, and private equity financiers, and works closely with intellectual property owners to help maximize the value of their rights in an ever-changing marketplace. Ms. Levites is experienced in structuring and negotiating film and television development deals, talent agreements, co-production and financing agreements, rights acquisition, content distribution, and foreign sales agreements, as well as all forms of production legal releases.
Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Ms. Levites served as Manager of Business and Legal Affairs for FilmNation Entertainment where she negotiated international film sales and distribution agreements for award-winning titles such as “Nebraska” and “The Imitation Game”, along with motion picture finance and development deals. Ms. Levites also spent time in the Business and Legal Affairs department at MTV, where she focused on international content distribution and format licensing for the music networks.
Ms. Levites is recognized by Variety in its 2022 Legal Impact Report, Best Lawyers in America in the 2023 edition of “Ones to Watch” for Entertainment and Sports law, and in the 2022 edition of The Legal 500 for her expertise in media & entertainment law. She was previously recognized in Variety’s 2019 “40 Under 40” New Leaders List, and in the Up Next List of Variety’s 2017 Dealmaker’s Elite New York Report. Since 2016, she has also been recognized in Super Lawyers magazine as a New York-area “Rising Star” in the Entertainment & Sports field. Ms. Levites currently serves on the Creative Executive Council for the NYU Production Lab.
Ms. Levites is admitted to practice in New York
Craig Morrison
Craig is a pioneer in professional historic preservation and restoration, applying hands-on investigation, study, and interpretation with careful restoration to bring new life to historic buildings. Over 21 years of independent practice, he has worked with the Second Bank of the United States, the Pennsylvania Capitol, Washington Union Station, Grand Central Terminal, the 1885 Academy of Music in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan and Philadelphia Opera Houses, and the 1894 Great Auditorium, Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Earlier projects included the New York Capitol, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Academy of Music, and City Hall in Philadelphia. For the Theatre Museum, New York, he prepared exhibits of theater architecture on Broadway and in Brooklyn. He collaborated with Oscar Andrew Hammerstein as co-curator of Direct from Broadway, an exhibition of the history of Broadway theater. His book, Theaters, is the first major pictorial study of America’s theater architecture. He served on the Board of Architectural Review in Alexandria, Virginia, as the first Chair of the Historic Designation Advisory Board in Detroit, and on the adjunct faculty of Wayne State University, the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and Eastern Michigan University. He has lectured in numerous venues including Yale University, the Library of Congress, and Oxford Polytechnic, and has published in the fields of architectural and theater history. He has chaired AIA Historic Buildings Committees in Philadelphia and New York. He has served on the Board of the League of Historic American Theatres, which honored him with the Lifetime Achievement Award. He founded Theater Heritage, Ltd, and served as President of the Theatre Historical Society of America. (University of Michigan)
Cleveland Sellers
Clevland Sellers is an educator and civil rights activist, leading the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and serving as during the Civil Rights Movement, where he coordinated voting registration for the Mississippi Democratic Party. Although not involved in the protests and wounded by the police in the shooting, he was the only person convicted and jailed in the Orangeburg Massacre. His conviction and the acquittal of the nine policemen who shot into the group of unarmed students, killing 3 and wounding at least 28, were believed to be racially motivated. He was pardoned 25 years later. After serving as Director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, he became President of Voorhees College, a Historically Black College in South Carolina, serving from 2008 to 2015. (B.A., Shaw University; Ed.M., Education, Harvard University; Ed.D., History, University of North Carolina, Greensboro)
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Anna T. Zacherl
Anna has been the Director of the Orangeburg County Public Library system for the last 7 years and was instrumental in the development of the new downtown library on Russell Street. She is a member of the South Carolina Association of Public Library Administrators and served as its chair for two years. She currently serves on the Board for Ace Basin Growers, a non-profit organization that assists local farmers and works to improve access to fresh fruits and vegetables in rural communities like Orangeburg. (B.A., History, George Mason University; Masters in Library Science, University of South Carolina)