Rich Buery,
Co-founder and
Executive Director

Erica Ahdoot,
Support Services Director

Erica has extensive experience with youth and family mental health services in youth development settings. As a therapist with the Adolescent Portable Therapy program at the Vera Institute of Justice, Erica provided individual and family-based substance abuse treatment for youth in the New York State juvenile justice system. Prior to working with Vera Institute, Erica worked for Partnership with Children, a New York school-based program, where she implemented long term treatment plans for children ages 6-12 with academic and emotional needs. She also worked as a lead counselor for Community Attention, a youth development program in Charlottesville, VA where she assisted in implementing a service learning model addressing issues such as substance abuse, school dropout, employment, and anger management. Erica has a M.S.W. degree from Columbia University School of Social Work and a B.A in Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Chaka Blackman,
Campus Director, PS 328

Chaka brings diverse education management and teaching experience to Groundwork. As Supervisor of Educational Initiatives at the Staten Island based New York Center for Interpersonal Development, Chaka oversaw the operations of two learning centers that provide education and workforce development services to over 400 young adults annually. Prior to working with NYCID, Chaka taught physics at Washington Irving High School and delivered teacher training and curriculum development for NYC middle schools through Project GEAR-UP. An honors graduate of Medgar Evers College at the City University of New York, Chaka grew up in East New York.

Darren J. Isom,
Program Director

Darren brings extensive project planning and implementation skills to the Groundwork team and joins the Groundwork team after working as Director of Global Logistics of the European Business Unit of CSI, an international trade finance group. Working as the Outreach Director of Summerbridge DC, at Sidwell Friends School, he recruited and managed over 150 volunteers from schools and companies throughout the Washington, DC area while overseeing the organization's relationship with other non-profits and coordinating all outreach initiatives. Darren spent two years in France under a fellowship from the Franco-American Institute studying xenophobia in French society and its effect on the integration of immigrant communities in Parisian suburbs and developing programs with community organizations to draw attention to their plight and effect change in their neighborhoods. A native of New Orleans, Darren is a graduate of Howard University and l 'Institut d'Študes Politiques de Paris.

Richard Souto,
Associate Executive Director for Operations and Finance

Richard Souto joins Groundwork with a diverse background in corporate development and private investment in multiple industries including healthcare and information technology. Richard's last position was Vice President of elucid, Inc., a subsidiary of Latona Associates, a private investment firm with a diverse portfolio of established and entrepreneurial businesses in the manufacturing, telecommunications, and chemicals industries. Prior to elucid, Richard was a founder and the Vice President of Transmed Healthcare, a healthcare services company, and held positions in business development at two early stage healthcare companies. Richard's volunteer experience includes serving on the Task Force of Creative Arts Workshops for Kids, a program that provides workshops in the arts for youth living in housing developments and homeless shelters in New York City. Richard also serves on the curriculum advisory committee of Youth Tech Entrepreneurs (YTE), an organization which develops student leaders, who use their academic, information technology and business skills to build stronger communities, and is an active volunteer for the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Richard is a graduate of Boston University and received an MBA from Baruch College of the City of New York.

Previn Butler,
Americorps Program Director

Previn graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans with a B.A. in Sociology and Spanish. He is currently pursing a masters in early childhood education at Hunter College. Through Teach for America, Previn taught kindergarden and sixth graders in the South Bronx. He started withGroundwork as a literacy specialist, and has stayed on to become the Americorps program director to foster a new partnership between Cypress Hill Local Development Corporation and Groundwork.

Belinda Waters-Brown,
Manager of Human Resources and Recruitment

Belinda joined Groundwork's team in February 2003, working to streamline the organizationís administrative functions and facilitating operational duties. Since January 2004, she has been working as the Manager of Human Resources and Recruitment, spearheading the recruitment and hiring of the Summer and After-School Academy program staff. Belinda earned a B.A. in English from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio and an M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from New York University. As a graduate student at NYU, Belinda tutored first graders at The Clinton-Hill School in Brooklyn through the America Reads/America Counts program, held internships at PR Newswire and Vibe magazine, and wrote for the New York Resident