Mariposa
Team
Shay Girard,
Ms. Girard has spent her entire career in community service. As Executive Director of Mariposa Community Partners, Ms. Girard sets our mission to serve communities. Ms. Girard oversees our community mission including our relationships with non-profit organizations and ensuring our projects meet their community objectives.
Prior to serving as Executive Director at Mariposa Community Partners, Ms. Girard served as Director of Development for House of Shine (501c3). House of Shine is a leadership development nonprofit. Their mission is to strengthen communities by growing confident, self-aware and resilient leaders who are equipped with a deep understanding of themselves and why their contributions to the world matter. As Director of Development, Ms. Girard was responsible for raising its operating budget as well as the capital campaign to raise $4M to build a dedicated educational space in Texas. House of Shine trains roughly 100 educators a year and hosts roughly 5,000 students a year with its programs.
Prior to this, Ms. Girard served as Director of Development for Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star (501c3), the largest Big Brothers Big Sisters organization in the United States. In this role, she was responsible for raising $4M a year for the operating budget. Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star provides mentoring to roughly 1,000 at-risk youth a year. Prior to this, Ms. Girard served as Director of the North Texas Special Needs Assistance Partners (SNAP) (501c3). In this role, she was responsible for both operations and raising capital to fund the $3M annual budget. SNAP runs both community programs and a community home for adults with cognitive disabilities. Ms. Girard began her career by specializing in social work at battered woman shelters in North Texas.
Ms. Girard has a Bachelors in Childhood Development from the Texas Tech University.
James Hickey,
As Chairman of the Board of Mariposa Community Partners, Mr. Hickey is responsible for operations, and compliance. Mr. Hickey brings a deep background in investments and operations. Mr. Hickey also advises our NMTC recipients on business operations and financing.
In addition to Mariposa Community Partners, Mr. Hickey serves as CEO of the SEC registered business development company X1 Capital Inc. Prior to this, Mr. Hickey served as Chief Investment Strategist at Avantax, an $80B BD-RIA platform with over 3,000 advisors. Before this, Mr. Hickey oversaw the illiquid investment strategies at the $3B quant investment firm FDO Partners.
Mr. Hickey received his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania – Wharton and his BA from Harvard University. Mr. Hickey is also a CFA Charterholder.
David Kelly,
Mr. David Kelly is a nationally recognized African-American business leader. Mr. Kelly has 35 years of real estate and capital markets experience. Mr. Kelly has arranged over $50B of financial transactions, developed over $3.5B in real estate assets, including over $600M in public-private partnerships.
Mr. Kelly has also served as the Chairman of the Texas Public Finance Authority for 2002-2006 and Chairman of the Teacher’s Retirement System of Texas for 2009-2017. Mr. Kelly is currently lead independent director of TCW Direct Lending and The Invesco REIT and is a director of Ashton Woods Homes.
Over his career, Mr. Kelly has developed over $3.5B in real estate assets, including over $600M in public-private partnerships.
Mr. Kelly graduated as a John Harvard Scholar in Economics from Harvard College and received an M.B.A from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Stephen Kelts,
Professor Steven Kelts serves as an Board member. Professor Kelts is a Professor at Princeton University at the School of Public and International Affairs, and is affiliated with the University Center for Human Values (UCHV). He is also an ethics advisor to the Responsible A.I. Institute.
Professor Kelts is dedicated to first-gen and low-income (FGLI) student success. He has been the lead investigator on a UCHV-funded project looking at strategies to encourage FGLI student success at institutions beyond the Ivy League and the ethical obligation of faculty to adopt proven teaching methods. For four years, he was part of a team designing the curriculum for Princeton’s nationally-recognized FGLI program, the Freshman Scholars Institute. He recently published a review in Teaching Philosophy on pedagogy for first-gen students.
In 2020, Kelts banded together with former students at Princeton to found Kalos Academy, an all-volunteer non-profit mentoring FGLI students at colleges up and down the East Coast. Its vital work has been recognized widely, and now Professor Kelts represents Kalos on the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities’ National Council for Student Success.
Mr. Kelts has his PhD from Stanford University and his BA from Harvard University.
Board Members
Christopher Dvorachek
ServisFirst Bank
Dan Hartman
Manufacturing Behavioral Science
Ed Hammele
Retired (SmartBank prior)
Seattle Hickey
3Boomerang
Shawn Graham
Xerox