Clarence R. Carter, a recently retired educator and entrepreneur, serves the GateWay Second Chance Foundation as Chair of the Board of Directors. His 45+ year span of management experience and educational background provide the unique leadership combination essential to bring the boarding school into fruition.
Starting out in the field of Human Services, Mr. Carter earned his B.A. in Social Work from Michigan State University and immediately began working with incarcerated male juvenile offenders in a Michigan residential treatment facility, later supervising and counseling those young men recently released to their communities. Seeing the severity of the educational deficits in his young charges and the need to intervene in the formal system of education on their behalf, Mr. Carter returned to Michigan State to earn a Master’s degree in Educational Administration. He subsequently joined the Grand Rapids Public School’s management team. While there, Mr. Carter worked with at-risk young men assuring that they were prepared to become gainfully employed as productive contributors to society through a Career and Vocational Education Program which he developed for underserved youth. Seeking to make an even greater contribution to the lives of underserved youth, Mr. Carter, a life-long learner, left the security of what he knew to enter the hallowed halls of the Harvard Business School. He thought it prudent that he gain a better understanding of the Business world and the opportunities it holds for qualified young men. He also saw this an opportunity to push forward the somewhat timid social agency approach to provision of service. After earning his Master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard, Mr. Carter earned his bona fides through increasingly responsible positions including financial analysis and budgeting, sales, marketing, and strategic planning, in renowned corporations including, Xerox, General Motors, Lear-Siegler, and Honeywell.
Along the way, Mr. Carter also found time to serve as adjunct professor of Business at DeVry Institute of Technology and Grand Valley State University, however, he never forgot the youth at-risk in our society and continued to seek ways to give back to the community by marrying the business and the educational worlds. In 2002, he returned to the field of education full time becoming Principal of a K-12 Christian School two years later, where he remained until his retirement in 2011.
