Thomas Walters
Thomas Walters has dedicated his life to the empowerment of his community. Thomas has been actively engaged in two consecutive AmeriCorps terms for the SilverCorps and Veteran Leader Corps programs; he participated in both programs through Hands On Atlanta. He is also actively involved with his church, AARP, and the Lupus Foundation. Through his service he has addressed the needs of the retired, the military community, low-income families and individuals, hunger and homelessness, and individuals with the Lupus disease.
Thomas volunteers for food distributions for low-income families in the Metro Atlanta area through the nonprofit organization SWEEAC. He leads support groups for other individuals diagnosed with Lupus through the Lupus Foundation. He has educated the retired population on car safety through his efforts at AARP. He has also served on various nonprofit boards including his church and SWEEAC.
Stephanie Reagan
Stephanie Reagan, currently serving as the Director of GC Miracle in a volunteer capacity, has devoted her college career to addressing the needs of The Children’s Hospital at the Medical Center of Central Georgia. The Children’s Hospital is the only dedicated children's facility between Atlanta, GA and Gainesville, FL, making it the main source of healthcare for over 49,000 children from 29 counties in South and Central GA. Since the hospital never turns anyone away for lack of funds, it is always in need of funds for its programs and equipment. As Director, Stephanie led an executive board of 12 students in a yearlong fundraising activity, culminating in the 2013 Space-themed Dance Marathon that exceeded expectations by engaging 300 volunteers to raise more than $42,000. Additionally, she has broadened the organization’s scope to include a wider swath of the community than ever before and has ensured the sustainability of her efforts through her ability to instill a sense of dedication and commitment in the members of her staff. Stephanie’s tremendous versatility, visionary thinking and extraordinary passion have raised the organization to new heights. She has made volunteerism with GC Miracle a priority throughout her college career, despite the fact that she is a full time Mass Communications student in her senior year.
Amy Granillo
Amy Granillo founded USMC Families, a nonprofit organization staffed by a multi-state network of volunteers providing support to Marine Corps families living both on military installations and within military impacted communities. The military community has an urgent need for family support programs. Amy and her volunteers help fill the gap between the government funding allocated to these programs and the need that is still there after funds are gone. Amy’s organization runs a literacy program, the Book Battalion, which provides an outlet for children to let their imaginations run wild with stories from books. The Book Battalion offers read aloud events, fun reading swag, books, summer reading cultivation workshops, and an online members-only area with downloadable reading activities, a secure educational gaming portal, and learning tools. Additionally, they have developed a Marine Corps Spouse Academy that offers a variety of professional and personal development opportunities for Marine Corps spouses who want to advance on their path to success.
Overall, Amy has spent thousands of hours working with the military community. Her mission is to help as many military spouses and children as she can in any way that she can.
Parth Chopra
Parth believes Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) are the driving forces in the advancement of our society. Therefore, he founded Project BEST (Building Excitement for Science and Technology), a student-led, non-profit organization dedicated to providing students with education, enrichment, and a joy in learning and understanding the exciting science and technology advances happening around us. Parth has led Project BEST to create eight different chapters at middle school locations all around Northern Virginia. These chapters meet regularly every other week and conduct STEM sessions provided by Project BEST. In addition to his work in creating chapters, Parth created a regional STEM conference called Science Innovation and Inspiration Youth Conference (ScI2YC) that brings together middle school students from eight different schools for a daylong event. The event allows students to immerse in STEM for a whole day and hear from professional researchers and CEOs in the STEM field. Parth has changed the community by helping create a new generation of STEM-centric students that will have the passion to pass high school and excel in college.
Michael Richard
Michael saw the growing childhood obesity problem, and in fact overcame a weight problem as a young child. He decided to do something about it and used his own money to create a Double Dutch Jump Rope Program at two middle schools with about 70% free or reduced lunch demographics. The Double Dutch Jump Rope Program has been a rousing success. It runs at the two middle schools in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and is popular with the students Michael and Dennis not only conduct the Jump Rope portion, they also serve as positive male role models to the participants. The young students get physical activity, and they get to discuss healthy living and the importance of education from these excellent high school students.
Rick Kelson
Rick Kelson attended his first meeting as a member of the KaBOOM! Board of Advisors in 2008 and from that moment, his incredible work ethic, passion, leadership and commitment help propel the organization in achieving new heights in realizing its vision of a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America. Since joining the board, Rick has helped KaBOOM! guide communities across North America in building more than 750 playgrounds with more than 150,000 volunteers with those playgrounds serving 1.2 million children. Via our online tools, thousands of additional communities have built playgrounds across the world, and Rick deserves a significant amount of credit for KaBOOM!’s enormous global impact in these last four-plus years. His unwavering commitment to KaBOOM! stems from the simple fact that he has always been a family man. As the former CFO of a Fortune 50 company, Rick could serve on nearly any board of any corporation or non-profit in the country, but he chooses to devote his time and talent to KaBOOM! because he understands the importance of play in the development of children and wants to help ensure that every child has access to a safe and engaging play space.
Ellen Brown Landers
Ellen Brown’s leadership, wisdom, generosity and dedication are what make her an indispensable member of the Boards of Directors for the Georgia Justice Project. In 2008, the Georgia Justice Project began facing substantial organizational challenges when the economy took a sharp downturn. Ellen spearheaded the charge to safeguard the Georgia Justice Project’s viability and sustainability. Through this time, she consistently leveraged her talents and vast community contacts to turn the organization around and ensure that it was able to keep its doors open to offer free legal, social, and employment services to the community.
Kelsey Sigman
Madeline Bethea
Madeline Bethea started Stuffed with Love in 2006 when she became involved with a youth development organization that required community service. At the age of five, Madeline found there to be limited opportunities for youth her age to engage in community service opportunities. . No one had a place for her on their project because she was "too young," therefore she started her own project. As a result, she founded Stuffed with Love, which takes gently loved stuffed animals, cleans them up, and donates them to those in need of a new fried.
Six year later, she has collected, cleaned and given away over 4,500 stuffed animals to nursing home residents, ill children in hospitals, and emergency first responders. Madeline has expanded her project to include younger girls. She accepts girls aged five and up to be on her team where her mantra is, "Even little people can give big!"