Providence, Rhode Island – September 23, 2016 – For exemplary volunteer service to Brown University, Dr. Sheryl D. Brissett Chapman ‘71, Executive Director of The National Center for Children and Families (NCCF), received The Brown Bear Award. The honor is Brown Alumni Association’s highest volunteer award and was granted for her many years of outstanding and wide-ranging personal service rendered to the University.
As an alumni volunteer leader for the Pembroke Center, Brown Annual Fund, Inman Page Black Alumni Council, and Brown Corporation, Chapman has been steadfast in her efforts to help Brown be its best self. Through the decades, she has become known for her thoughtful leadership and steadfast support.
According to Chapman, “I am humbled. Brown provided me with a powerful foundation and intersectional identity as a young African American female advocate for social change. I discovered my deep passion for service, my creativity, and my leadership instinct there. For this, I am grateful and loyal to my alma mater.”
This is not the first award Brown University has bestowed upon Chapman; in 2005 she was presented with the John Hope Award for Public Service, which is named for the 1894 African-American alumnus who dedicated his life to education and community service. With this award, the Brown Alumni Association honors a graduate whose commitment to public service exemplifies leadership, innovation, and a direct impact on the community.
Though she has served in various roles advocating for youth and children throughout her career, Chapman’s crowning achievement is the evolution of NCCF. Under her leadership, the non-profit evolved from serving 66 children, to a thriving center that touches more than 38,000 children in the metropolitan Washington area each year.
About The National Center for Children and Families
Founded in 1915 as an orphanage in the District of Columbia, NCCF is a private, nonprofit child and family welfare agency with a commitment to serving poor, disadvantaged, abused, neglected, and/or abandoned children, youth, and their families. Current program services include emergency shelters and transitional housing for homeless families and youth, a high-intensity therapeutic group home for adolescents, therapeutic and traditional foster care and adoption, independent living for youth transitioning to adulthood, teen parent services, and community and school-based prevention services that promote academic achievement, parental involvement, economic and vocational stability, and healthy families. Its programs have become social service models, redefining both NCCF’s reputation and the agency’s position in the human service continuum in the Washington Metropolitan Region.
Contact:
Annie Wilson
301-365-4480 x135
awilson@nccf-cares.org
