Greenwich Harbor Partners Fills Board Position for Teach for America
March 30, 2021 – Greenwich Harbor Partners partnered with Teach for America in the recent recruitment of TransUnion executive Hilary Chidi to its board of directors.
“Hilary is a rising star at TransUnion, a company that is highly committed to social responsibility; he was immediately attracted to Teach for America’s mission to support educational equality and excellence,” said Ted Pryor, managing director of Greenwich Harbor Partners. Mr. Chidi will serve on the board for Teach for America’s Chicago-Northwest Indiana region.
Mr. Chidi is executive vice president, head of global credit risk and chief sustainability officer for TransUnion. Previously, he was senior vice president, chief product officer (consumer) and chief sustainability officer. He is based in TransUnion’s Chicago headquarters. Prior to joining TransUnion, Mr. Chidi was a vice president at TIAA in New York, where he was focused on helping to drive the development of various financial products for the consumer market. Mr. Chidi has a track record in overseeing high-visibility/high-impact initiatives and groups within complex organizations, including Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve Bank. He holds masters’ degrees from Harvard University and the London School of Economics as well as an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Teach for America is a non-profit organization whose stated mission is to “enlist, develop and mobilize as many as possible of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence. The organization aims to accomplish this by recruiting and selecting college graduates from top universities around the U.S. to serve as teachers. The selected members, known as “corps members,” commit to teaching for at least two years in a public or public charter K–12 school in one of the 52 low-income communities that the organization serves. Today, half of the corps identify as people of color, half come from low-income backgrounds, and more than 1,000 corps members and alumni were themselves taught by a Teach for America corps member when they were students.
Related: U.S. Boards Seen as Slowly Evolving
This not the first time the organization has turned to Greenwich Harbor Partners to help find new board members. Last year, the firm helped recruit Teach for America to expand its board of advisors and recruited Elizabeth Thompson, chief people officer of Southeastern Grocers; Cindy Reynolds, chief philanthropy officer of Baptist Health; Riley Keys, general manager of Fanatics; and Kevin Hyde, managing partner of Jacksonville, Foley and Lardner.
“In the current environment, Teach for America’s mission of providing highly qualified teaching interns to resource-limited rural and urban schools is more relevant than ever,” said Mr. Pryor. “Happily, in the COVID/BLM environment, highly-qualified candidates have been eager to be considered for boards of non-profit organizations.”
Veteran Recruiters
Greenwich Harbor Partners’ principals, Carrie and Ted Pryor, have worked in industry as general managers and investors and have direct professional experience with the types of issues that face their clients. The firm’s client roster includes IBM Cloud Services, Media General, Marlin Equity Partners, DIRECTV, SpinMedia, ReelzChannel TV, and Keurig Green Mountain, among others.
Greenwich Harbor Partners Assists Chalkbeat in Recruiting Board Members
Greenwich Harbor Partners partnered with Chalkbeat to expand its board, recruiting Karen Wishart, executive vice president of Urban One, and Roberto Yañez, president and GM of Local News New York for Univision. “It was a pleasure working with Elizabeth Green, founder of Chalkbeat, and the nominating committee to find new board members,” said Carrie Pryor, managing director of the search firm. “Chalkbeat has such an important mission providing essential reporting on education issues in local markets across the country.”
Carrie Pryor has over 20 years of senior executive search experience. She has recruited board directors, CEOs, and their direct reports, as well as partners for private equity firms. In addition to her board seat with the New York Pops, she serves as an advisory board member for Constellation Ventures. A veteran of the internet space since the early ’90s, she has deep experience in digital media, entertainment and private equity.
Mr. Pryor focuses on senior-level assignments for general management, sales, marketing, and digital transformation. He specializes in recruiting executives using his four years as CFO and CEO of a venture-backed start-up, 10 years at General Electric Capital and 20 years in international finance and investment banking. Mr. Pryor has served on public, private and non-profit boards and chaired the audit committee for the Boston Celtics. In executive recruiting, he has focused on business services, digital marketing, e-commerce, ad sales, place-based advertising, communications and customer service for growth companies and large national brands.
Related: 10 Key Findings That Impact Board Performance
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media