Drawing on extensive experience from across the education, business, public policy and nonprofit sectors, the Emily K leadership team has the expertise necessary to build high quality programs that achieve high impact results.
Marleah Rogers, Chief Executive Officer and President
Lauren Gardner, Chief Operating Officer
Adam Eigenrauch, Director of Education
Amy Cummings, Associate Director for Educational Programming
Heather Hindin, Educational Program Coordinator
Karman Kent, Special Projects Coordinator
Michele Brown, Office Manager
Diana Nelson, Marketing and Development Strategist
Marleah Rogers, CEO and President
Marleah Rogers is the CEO & President of the Emily Krzyzewski Center, where she focuses on the multi-year phase-in and financing of our K to College Model, the leverage of strategic public and private sector partnerships to achieve a greater social return on investment, and the organization’s strategic growth plan. She credits the Center for Advanced Social Entrepreneurship at Fuqua’s School of Business for exposing her to leaders in the educational field who are successfully addressing educational inequities, in particular KIPP and TFA. Introductions to these and other best practices, as well as leading research by foundations from across the country, led to the emergence of a scalable, fully integrated non-profit business model that brings the best private and public resources together to support the academic, character and leadership development of high potential, low income students from early elementary through college.
Marleah brings to the Center more than 25 years of leadership experience in a variety of global businesses and consulting firms. Her background includes strategy development and implementation, portfolio management and restructuring, new market entry and business start-ups, development of capacity building strategic partnerships and results based business models, and complex merger integrations.
Marleah has a bachelor’s degree in business management (magna cum laude). She is a guest speaker at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business on a wide range of topics in the areas of social entrepreneurship and leadership. She also serves on the Board of Directors for The Hill Center, a leading educational expert and a globally replicated school.
Lauren Gardner, COO
Lauren Gardner began as an intern for the Emily Krzyzewski Center in the summer of 2005 where she was instrumental in strategy and program development prior to the Center’s opening. Since receiving her MBA in the summer of 2006, she has served full-time as the Chief Operating Officer where her roles include financial management, strategy and program development, IT management, and various other responsibilities.
Prior to working for the Emily K Center, Lauren served as a Peace Corps Volunteer focused on small business and community development in St. Lucia. Lauren graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in International Economics, and received an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business
Adam Eigenrauch, Director of Education
Adam Eigenrauch has served as the Director of Education at the Emily Krzyzewski Center since July 2006. In that role, he focuses on program implementation, partnerships, evaluation, capacity-building, and communications specific to Center’s mission.
Prior to joining the Emily Krzyzewski Center, Adam spent 10 years as an educator and administrator in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Following a four year teaching stint, he became the district’s Coordinator of Extended Learning. As such, he assumed primary responsibility for 12 academic-based after school programs serving a combined enrollment of 1,100 students annually.
Adam earned his bachelors degree in Speech Communication from Ithaca College, and was awarded his masters degree in Education from Penn State University.
Amy Cummings, Associate Director for Educational Programming
Amy Cummings, Associate Director for Educational Programming, has been developing and facilitating program implementation at the Emily K Center since January of 2006, before the Center opened.
Amy’s experience in education began at the Field School in Washington, DC, where, in addition to teaching social studies and math to seventh through 12th graders for six years, she served in a variety of administrative roles. She managed the admissions office, served on various strategic planning committees, and coached several sports. While in graduate school, she worked on consulting projects to improve middle school certification processes, evaluate student teaching processes and supervise student teachers. She also worked in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools, taught in the UNC History department and consulted on curriculum and lesson planning for the Visiting International Faculty Program based in Chapel Hill, NC.
Amy received her bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in 1996. During her time there, she conducted research on the education of minority populations. She earned a Masters of Arts in Education in 2003 from the University of North Carolina’s program in Culture, Curriculum and Change.
Heather Hindin, Coordinator of Education Program
Heather Hindin is the Coordinator of Educational Programming at the Emily Krzyzewski Center, where she provides management and direct oversight of the implementation of K to College Model programs.
Heather graduated from Lynchburg College with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology/Special Education. In accordance with federal legislature, Heather earned Highly Qualified teacher status in Virginia in 2006 and in North Carolina in 2007.
Karman Kent, Program Support Manager
Karman Kent is the Special Projects Coordinator at the Emily Krzyzewski Center, where her primary responsibilities consist of volunteer management, serving as language liaison for the Center’s growing Latino population, and a wide range of additional program support.
Prior to joining the Emily Krzyzewski Center, Karman served as the campus campaign manager for Teach for America implementing marketing and networking strategies to recruit future corps members. She also worked for Opportunity International, a microfinance organization serving more than 1,000,000 poor entrepreneurs internationally each year, to further their Women's Opportunity Fund. In addition she developed the Champions for Children program at Bethany Christian Services in Kalamazoo, MI and assisted in major fundraising and outreach endeavors.
Karman graduated from Kalamazoo College with degrees in Sociology and Anthropology. She has also spent time studying at La Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez in Oaxaca, Mexico, developing fluency and insight into the Latino population.
Michele Brown, Office Manager
Michele Brown became the Office Manager at the Emily Krzyzewski Center in September of 2006.
Prior to this, Michele worked as the sole employee relations representative for the Hertz Corporation, Car Sales Division, where for eight years she performed HR duties for 43 locations throughout the US. Her work included training new employees in diversity and safety, conducting safety audits for OSHA compliance and corporate office, employment, hiring and payroll issues, to name a few. Michele also worked extensively in the New York City Public School system as a paraprofessional for 10 years, where she was a teaching assistant for grades K-2 and then Special Education assistant in grades three and four. Her joint background in education and human relations made the transition to current role at Emily K a good fit, as here she has the joys of working to benefit the children as well as assisting the staff and managing the office.
Michele attended York College (CUNY), where she pursed a degree in Early Childhood Education.
Diana Nelson, Marketing and Development Strategist
Diana founded Nelson Partners, a boutique communications consultancy based in Chapel Hill, in 2006 with over 14 years of senior advisory experience in strategic marketing, communications and the practice of law, having worked with clients such as Gucci, Starwood, Duke University and ABC. She works closely with the Emily Krzyzewski Center directing marketing and development strategy.
She previously served as director of communications at Duke Law School, where she led brand development through institutional positioning and messaging, event planning and execution, web content, video production, publication of Duke Law Magazine and national media relations. Prior to this, she was associate partner with Brunswick, the international financial communications consultancy, in the firm's NYC office.
Diana started her career as an attorney in Atlanta and NYC. She is an honors graduate of Duke University and the UNC School of Law.
- Emily Krzyzewski Center
- 904 W. Chapel Hill St
- Durham, North Carolina 27701
- Ph: (919) 680.0308
- Fax: (919) 680.0309