Paving the Way: Lifetime Achievement

Welcome to NonProfit PRO’s 2017 Nonprofit Professionals of the Year Awards. This entry is for Nonprofit Professional of the Year. To view all of this year’s award winners, click here.

Vincent Strully Jr. 
Founder and CEO
The New England Center for Children

Vincent Strully Jr. founded The New England Center for Children (NECC) over 40 years ago with the vision of becoming the global leader in provision of effective, evidence-based educational services for the millions of underserved children with autism, along with their families.

Strully brought this vision to life by identifying organizational needs and goals to best fulfill NECC’s mission. He created a four-prong strategy that focuses on educational best practices based on scientifically proven applied behavior analysis to help children with autism, professional development of teachers and behavior analysts, research to support education of children with autism and development of scalable technology that leverage NECC’s expertise and extensive research.

To-date, NECC has completed a $10 million campaign that funded the John and Diane Kim Autism Institute and a 13,500 square-foot space for a new student wellness center. In 2016, student enrollment increased 10 percent, staff expanded by 13 percent and worldwide adoption of NECC’s autism curriculum
increased to 15 percent.

“Vincent has spearheaded successful fundraising campaigns and grant awards to finance new programs and growth, including a $5.5 million capital campaign, a $10.9 million capital campaign and a $3.4 million technology grant from Microsoft,” Kyla McHaffie, executive assistant at NECC, said.

Runner-Up

David K. Main
President and CEO 
HCDC, Inc. 

David K. Main founded HCDC, Inc., formerly known as Hamilton County Development Co. Inc. HCDC is a nonprofit organization overseeing economic development activities for the largest county in Greater Cincinnati. Main will retiring in the Spring of 2018 after remaining at the helm of the organization’s 35-year history. Throughout the years, Main’s strategic vision, attention to detail and working knowledge of HCDC’s three areas (small business lending, economic development and business incubation) has enabled him to help his staff cultivate growth for the organization internally and organically. Main has also served on the Minority Entrepreneur Seminar panel for the Ohio Department of Development and previously served as president for the Ohio Development Association, as well as president, treasurer and director for the National Association of Development Companies.