OUR WISEMEN

Born January 17th, 1983 in Fresno California, Dion-Jay LeKent Brookter was born to two loving parents – John L. Brookter & Denise M. Brown. Born and raised in Fresno he was taught early on the values of dedication, integrity and excellence were not simply words, but ideas that you live by every day. From grammar school to high school Dion-Jay distinguished himself academically and in athletics by consistently holding a variety of leadership positions both on the field and in the classroom.

Gregory Collins is a people person.  He discovered that when he was about 10 years old growing up in Camden, New Jersey as class mates would come to him for advice on how best to impress their friends.  Always among the top contenders for “most dangerous city,” Camden offered its youth, including Greg, many opportunities.  Unfortunately, many of those opportunities created a path Greg did not want to take.  He did not want to go to jail.  He knew there were other ways to be successful.

Landon Dickey grew up in San Francisco, graduated from Lowell High School, earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from Harvard University, a master’s degree in education from Hunter College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Theo Ellington began an early career in the field of community and political organizing. In 2008, he was appointed by then Mayor Gavin Newsom to the San Francisco Youth Commission to advise city agency on governmental polices pertaining to young people across the city.  This gave valuable insight to the political process. 

Joshua was born into a family of great faith, as the first born grandchild –a lot of time, love and instruction was poured into him. He began working at the age of 8 in a recycling business with his grandmother and younger brother. They were the youngest entrepreneurs everywhere they went. od as his word and that He could do all things through Christ who strengthens him.

Benjamin “BJ” McBride is the communications coordinator at Blue Shield of California Foundation. In this role, he is responsible for coordinating a variety of policy, communications, and public affairs efforts related to the Foundation’s health care and domestic violence programs. This entails messaging and branding, social media and email campaigns, design projects, policy outreach, and other strategies that help to raise the visibility of the Foundation’s grantmaking across California.

Felix attended Maseno School, graduating with an A- and studying standardized English, literature, creative writing, comprehension, poetry, and logic. He was ranked 4th out of more than 200,000 students, and in 2007, he took an IT course and came up with a plan for moving into aviation.