The Delanie Walker Gives Back Foundation announced that Mark Claypool, founder, president and CEO of ChanceLight™ Behavioral Health, Therapy & Education, has been named to the foundation’s executive board.
ChanceLight is the nation’s leading provider of behavior therapy, speech, physical and occupational therapy and alternative and special education programs for more than 14,000 children and young adults across the country. Having previously served his community as a social worker and education administrator, Claypool, a social entrepreneur, founded the company in 1999 as Educational Services of America. The company rebranded as ChanceLight in 2015.
The Delanie Walker Gives Back Foundation was founded by Tennessee Titan tight end Delanie Walker to provide inner city and low-income children with educational opportunities and resources to reach their full potential and beat the odds. The foundation is managed by Prolanthropy, the largest provider of philanthropy management services in professional sports.
“We are grateful to have Mark as part of The Delanie Walker Gives Back Foundation leadership team,” said Amy Grieme, vice president of foundation management at Prolanthropy. “Mark’s expertise and passion for children’s education will be invaluable to the Foundation, whose goal is to impact more than 20,000 at-risk Nashville and Middle Tennessee Students by the end of 2017.”
“Throughout my career, I have been dedicated to supporting children’s education and providing them with the tools they need to succeed,” said Claypool. “I am honored to have the opportunity to work with an organization that provides Nashville students with the behavioral and educational supports they need to help them reach their full potential and create better lives for themselves, their families and their communities.
Claypool is a member of the advisory board for the Association of Professional Behavior Analysts, a member of the Council for Exceptional Children and the Education Research and Development Institute, and a judge of the Penn Graduate School of Education business plan competition.
Claypool is also president of the board of Book’Em, a Nashville nonprofit that collects and distributes books to children and teens in lower-income families and provides reading role models for elementary and preschools that serve low-income children. He also recently co-authored the book We’re In This Together: Public-Private Partnerships in Special and At-Risk Education” and is writing a second book that explores the disconnect between special education law, specifically the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its relationship to young children who have autism.
About Prolanthropy
Prolanthropy is the largest provider of philanthropy management services in professional sports. Having established an industry leading presence built on nearly two decades of world-class results, Prolanthropy stands alone as the “go to” organization for the “Good Guys” in professional sports. The organization’s mission is to create a national impact for those in need by strategically aligning a well-respected professional athlete with a compelling cause and a professionally managed infrastructure that unites proven business principles from both the for-profit and the not-for-profit worlds. For more information, please visit http://www.prolanthropy.net/.
About the Delanie Walker Gives Back Foundation
Established in 2014, the Delanie Walker Gives Back Foundation is on a mission to provide inner city and low-income children with the educational opportunities and resources to reach their full potential and beat the odds. For more information, please visit delaniewalker.org.
