LEADERSHIP

After relocating from Shaker Heights, Ohio, our family enterprise today is lead from Chicago, Illinois, by Dianne and Bill Derrick Jr.

Actively taking part in leadership are Dianne and Bill’s sons, William III, Chris and Alex. They are co-inventors of the company’s platform technology, and they practice digital arts developing and producing electronic media for consumer-facing and business-facing environments.

Dianne and Bill Jr. have extended the psychology-education-engineering foundation and its mission, values and skills established by Sarah and Bill Sr. Added to such foundation has been the assembly of demonstrable multi-disciplines, multi-cultural competency, skilled content development, internal software development, strategic partnering relationships, organizational competencies and other resources.

Dianne B. Derrick

Dianne is a co-founder, Managing Director and Vice-President – Chief Engagement Officer of our company as it is constituted today. She is a co-inventor of the company’s pattern-of-life platform technology.

Dianne develops and applies dynamic personalized-technology learning: to facilitate high-level learning capabilities; to activate such capabilities through changes and alterations of patterns-of-life; and to apply such alterations to improve quality of life. 

Applying dynamic personalized-technology learning includes project-based learning, critical thinking, agency learning, problem solving and negotiation.  Such approach enhances deep learning and patient-centered decisioning, when applied to integral aspects of daily living, including home and social experiences, culture and language. 

Dianne’s professional experience with dynamic personalized-technology learning includes:

  • Co-developer/co-manager of the corporate-sponsored Power & Purpose mental health initiative in Chicago
  • Developer of the gifted and the community-based education initiatives at the Shaker Heights (Ohio) City School District, where she was senior project representative and lead instructor
  • Co-developer with Karen Ashby, M.D., of the midwifery program at University Hospitals, Cleveland
  • Participation in the launch of The Children’s Television Network Sesame Street programming in Washington, D.C., at the William Syphax School
  • Studies at the Bank Street Graduate School

Expertise in dynamic personalized-technology learning has been extended by Dianne to include complex consumer outreach, engagement and retention strategies and programs. She has integrated them with corporate-sponsored, as well as government-supported, experiential initiatives and associated cause and event-related initiatives. These initiatives have been activated in immersive experiences and themes relevant and valuable to target audiences, including:

  • Health and wellness
  • Fashion and lifestyle
  • Life-stage
  • Self-recognition
  • Community outreach

An award-winning classroom teacher, is Dianne a repeat member of Who’s Who In Education, and she was a member of the Educators Advisory Board of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.  She is twice past-president of The Links Incorporated, Cleveland Chapter, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and active with many community organizations in Chicago and Cleveland. 

Education:  Mary Manse College for Women, B.A.; the Minority Executive Business Education Program, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College; post-graduate studies at American University, Catholic University, John Carroll University and Kent State University.

Bill Derrick, Jr.

Bill conceived our business model and is a co-founder, Managing Director and President of our business today, as well as a co-inventor of its platform technology. 

He is experienced in creating innovative, IT-enabled, processes and services, in providing complex marketing and fulfillment services, in new-market (vertical and geographic) entry and expansion and in internal-use software development.  The scope of Bill’s experience includes partner alliance development, procurement, production, manufacture, offset and countertrade, government contracting, licensing and merchandising serving a variety of industries, domestic and abroad. 

After having practiced with the law firm now known as Squire Patton Boggs, Bill established his own law firm in Cleveland with cabinet members and staff of Mayor Carl Stokes’ administration and U.S. Representative Louis Stokes.  Built on a tax law practice, the scope of his legal work included real estate, import/export trade, feature film entertainment, music and sports, finance, hospitality, broadcast television, intellectual property, licensing and government regulation (including IRS, SEC, HUD, HHS, the FAR). 

Previously, Bill worked in Washington, D.C., in the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and with local government and community development agencies. He was a Congressional Intern on the staff of U.S. Representative Charles E. Mosher (R-13th, Ohio).

While a law student at Howard University, Bill obtained a grant from the Meyer Foundation established by Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer to service the Washington, D.C. area. Bill applied these funds to establish the Neighborhood Consumer Information Center, a consumer advocacy organization located at 3005 Georgia Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. NCIC employed over 40 Howard University law students. NCIC became a program under the Office of Equal Opportunity, the Federal agency created by President Lyndon Johnson responsible for administering programs of The War on Poverty such as VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start and the Community Action Program.  NCIC publications included Buyer Beware, a manual on how to set up a neighborhood consumers information and complaint handling facility in the inner city. Bill shared insights on the patterns-of-life of urban consumers in testimony before the Federal Trade Commission.

Bill co-authored “Tax Management Portfolio,” Real Estate Investment Trusts, No. 742-2nd, published by the Bureau of National Affairs/Bloomberg. 

Profiled in Who’s Who In American Law, 1st edition, Bill was an adjunct member of the Partnership Committee, Tax Section, American Bar Association.  He was an adjunct professor at the John Marshall School of Law, Cleveland State University, where he developed the first course in real estate development.

Education:  George Washington University Law Center, LLM (tax); Howard University, J.D.; John Carroll University, A.B.