Summary

Ricardo Neal is the Principal and Managing Director for The Propel Agency, LLC. a management and leadership consulting firm. For nearly 30 years Neal has served in various leadership and governance roles within the education, philanthropic, and advocacy sectors and has led community change work both nationally and internationally. His management, fundraising, policy and advocacy, and community activism expertise has been utilized in leadership roles across public institutions and community-based organizations. Neal has focused his work on representing and advocating on behalf of people living in under-resourced communities.

Management and Organizational Leadership

Neal is widely respected for his management approach and has served in various roles over two and half decades of service. Since 2020, Neal has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of We Will All Rise, a nationally recognized organization focused on improving life outcomes for young men of color. In 2017, Neal joined The Literacy Lab as Director of Innovation and Strategy, where he led the national expansion of the Leading Men Fellowship, an initiative designed to expose young men of color to careers in education. Neal served nearly six years (2011-2017) at Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC. He held several positions at Eastern rising to Director of Strategy and Logistics (a role equivalent to a Chief Operating Officer in the private sector) at the second-largest comprehensive public high school in the District of Columbia, with an average budget of $10.5 million. He also designed programming and secured funding for various efforts at Eastern, including $200,000 to support mentoring efforts for young men of color through the district’s Empowering Males of Color (EMOC) initiative.

In 2009, Neal co-founded ProspectNeal Consulting, a firm specializing in non-profit capacity building and school district planning for off-track youth. Before his time leading ProspectNeal Consulting, Neal served as director of development for two years at Boston’s historic Freedom House and served as its executive director for five years.

Neal joined Caribbean U-Turn in 2001, a small youth program in the Mattapan area of Boston, serving as Director for Program Planning. In his new capacity, Neal oversaw the day-to-day operations of the organization. He streamlined the agency’s operations and implemented management control systems to support the agency’s infrastructure. An institution with less than $100,000 in revenues when he joined in 2001, Neal led the effort to triple the organization’s income within two years. He co-authored a three-year $900,000 U.S. Department and Health and Human Service grant for the organization.

Prior to his public education and consulting roles, Neal worked at the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC). He managed $2 million in federal Ryan White Care Act funding to provide a broad spectrum of HIV/AIDS care treatment delivery. While at BPHC, he coordinated $500,000 in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Minority AIDS Initiative to identify and bring more people of color into the healthcare system.

Community Activism and Policy Advocacy

In addition to his leadership role, Neal has served on boards and commissions throughout his career. Upon graduation from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in 1995, he was appointed to the Lawrence Human Rights Commission and later elected Co-chair of the body. In 2001, Neal was a founding board member of the Heart of Boston Scholarship Foundation, an organization working with high-risk middle school youth and providing scholarships to students unable to finish their college education. Neal joined the board of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries in 2002, a Newton, MA-based organization that focused on bridging the gap between urban and suburban congregations and community-based organizations. Neal joined Haymarket People’s Fund in 2002 and served as president of the board for four years. As President of Haymarket People’s Fund, Neal helped restructure the organization through its anti-racist efforts and helped guide grant-making policies. Neal joined the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition board in 2005 to focus more on advocacy for immigrant and refugee rights across Massachusetts. Neal played an active role in education reform in Boston, MA, through Boston’s Public Schools, High School Renewal Working Group (2006-2007). In 2007, Neal was the founding chair of the Multicultural Outreach Drop-out Collaborative, an effort to reduce the dropout rate and re-engage students of color in public education. Neal has been a member of the board of Washington, DC-based LearnServe International since 2013, supporting the organization’s effort to spur youth entrepreneurship and global activism, and has chaired the board since 2017. Neal served as co-lead for Baltimore City’s Boys and Young Men of Color Working Group from 2020-2022.

Neal has won numerous awards including the Boston University School of Social Work, Hubie Jones Service Alumni Award (2005), Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst Alumni Association, Distinguished Alumni Service Award (2008), and District of Columbia Public Education Fund Rubenstein Award for Highly Effective School Staff (2017). He is a contributing author in the newly released book, We Be Lovin’ Black Children: Learning to Be Literate About the African Diaspora (Myers Education Press – March 2021).

Neal earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Master’s degree in Social Work from the Boston University School of Social Work. Born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Neal currently lives in Baltimore, MD, with his wife and two children.