CARL DORVIL
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG
PROFILE ABOUT CARL DORVIL Carl Dorvil is President/CEO of Group Excellence, a Dallas-based education services company with divisions in Austin, Houston and Fort Worth and operations ranging from private tutoring to college preparation workshops. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, Group Excellence is one of the few companies certified by the state of Texas to offer free tutoring for students in low-performing, economically disadvantaged areas. The company’s mission is to motivate and inspire students to achieve excellence in academics through mentoring relationships and tutoring programs. Founded in 2004 while Dorvil was still in college, Dorvil shuttled students and tutors around in his car between classes. In just 5 years, Group Excellence has grown to be the top-performing Supplemental Educational Service (SES) provider in the state. In the 2008 - 2009 school year alone, the company served
roughly 5,000 students across the state. Group Excellence consistently outperforms all other education services in student passing rates and attendance. In one Dallas middle school, math scores shot up from 12 percent to 60%+ passing only 8 months after activating the Group Excellence program. The difference is a unique emphasis on mentoring, combined with a specially-trained staff that helps students aspire to unparalleled understanding of academic materials. Still relentless, Dorvil seeks to grow the company’s statewide presence and go national with the help of a talented management team. To support this endeavor, he launched SureStudy.com, an interactive website with artificial intelligence that tutors students according to classroom curriculums.
NOTABLES June 24, 2008
Dallas Independent School District and Dallas Achieves! award Group Excellence with their certificate of appreciation for GE’s participation and contribution in the “City Wide Youth Mentoring Coalition.”
June 3, 2008
The Texas Education Agency and School Improvement Resource Center name Carl Dorvil, Group Excellence President/CEO, to the Texas SES Task Force.
May 15, 2008
Group Excellence awards 2 seniors at Samuel High School $4,000 scholarships.
March 3, 2007
Group Excellence was presented the Pinnacle Award for outstanding work in the community by the Dallas County Peace Officers Association.
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG
“GE has grown from a small, oneone-man show, with my car as the office, into a nearly 300300person operation, with offices in four Texas cities.”
BIOGRAPHY Success stories don’t always begin with an alien pod crashing in a cornfield in Kansas. My story begins in Garland, Texas, where I grew up, a son of Haitian immigrants. I attended grades 1 – 12 at a small but competitive private school called Garland Christian Academy (GCA). During high school, I picked up a nickname, Superman, due to all the activities I was involved with while maintaining a high GPA. After graduating from GCA as the first Black class president and first Black Salutatorian, this nickname followed me to my freshman year of college at Southern Methodist University, where I was encouraged to run for class president as Carl "Superman" Dorvil. After a tough campaign, I was elected to the position, and then began the challenge to live up to my nickname. That first year, I worked four jobs (Legal Assistant Intern, Calculus Teacher’s Assistant, Tutor at the Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center, and Psychology Research Assistant) while maintaining a 3.88 GPA and being named one of the Silver Key top 15 Freshmen. Throughout my undergraduate career, I continued to work multiple jobs and was still able to earn honors and awards such as the Mortar Board Top Ten Sophomore Award, gain acceptance into the SMU Psychological Distinction Program, and earn the Outstanding Minority Student Award. I graduated from SMU in 2005 with a triple major in Psychology with Distinction, Economics, and Public Policy with a 3.75 GPA.
inspiring students to achieve academic excellence through mentoring and tutoring. GE has grown from a small, oneman show, with my car as the office, into a nearly 300person operation, with offices in four Texas cities: Houston, Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth. GE now serves approximately 5,000 students throughout the state, and our growth is steady. As I was starting to grow the business, one of my first clients was the son of Phil Romano. Mr. Romano is the creator of restaurants such as Romano's Macaroni Grill and Fuddruckers. After hearing about GE, he recommended that I attend SMU's Cox School of Business, where he sits on the Board of Trustees. I took Mr. Romano’s advice and, after getting married in November 2005 to my beautiful wife Kara, I began my professional Masters of Business Administration at Cox in January 2006. The knowledge that I gained from business school propelled GE into becoming one of the most respected tutoring companies under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Group Excellence has provided more hours of tutoring under the NCLB program than any other company in the history of Texas. Since my graduation from Cox in May of 2008, Group Excellence has continued to thrive. I have also partnered with my old roommate from SMU, Ben Goerz, a BBA Scholar (class of 2006), to start an interactive online tutoring business called SureStudy, LLC. Of all my accomplishments, the one I am most proud of is my son Noah, who was born in August 2008. I credit SMU for giving me the tools and the talent to be able to take off my blazer, loosen up my tie and step into the telephone booth...
During January 2004, my third year at SMU, my best friend and future business partner, Ben Bhatti, encouraged me to read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. After reading the book, I felt challenged to start a business. I started Group Excellence (GE) out of my dorm room. Since then, it has been my pleasure to serve as President/CEO of GE. In this role, I lead a team of talented young professionals and college students dedicated to the mission of motivating and
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG
What’s your goal?
Our mission is simple: what we strive to do better than anyone else in the world is motivate and inspire students. Our core strength is motivation. We bring college students who have been successful and take them to areas where hope is a scarce commodity. We show kids they can do it. We bring college to them. We're not a tutoring company that mentors, we're a mentoring company that tutors - and that makes all the difference. Sometimes we'll work on a kid's math scores and his science and reading scores go up. Once you turn that light switch on for a kid, the whole world changes for him.
Why is mentoring so important to tutoring?
Carl QQ-&-A Q: How did Group Excellence grow so big, so fast?
A: When I started it, friends said I was crazy. I got a meeting with DISD (Dallas Independent School District) math director and things came together. I started with 80 kids and now we’re up to almost 5,000 in 4 cities across Texas. The second year it took off when Ben Bhatti came on board. We worked with 600 students at Samuell High School on the TAKS and had the 2nd highest gains in the district. Things took off with the No Child Left Behind Act and we became the biggest provider of NCLB tutoring in Texas
What’s next?
We want to lead Texas in online education. We’ve started another company called SureStudy.com which has online interactive AI that learns the kid’s strengths and weaknesses to help them pass the TAKS. We also hope to expand to Corpus Christi, El Paso, Brownsville and San Antonio, then other states. We'd rather be great than big and make sure everything we do is happening at an excellent level.
“We're most successful with the kids who seem to be doing the worst, those at the bottom of the barrel, the ones that aren't trying. When a kid scores 10 and 20% on a test there’s something bigger happening – they aren't even trying.”
Every school has a population of at-risk youth who need an extra push. Actually, the research shows that we're most successful with the kids who seem to be doing the worst, those at the bottom of the barrel, the ones that aren't trying. When a kid scores 10% and 20% on a test there’s something bigger happening – they aren't even trying. We take that population and show them school matters. We turn on the light switch and get kids who weren't trying to try.
Why would a college disadvantaged youth?
student
want
to
tutor
They get an opportunity to see what's going on in education in America. We have a jaded point of view. We start to believe something is deficient with the students but you see that these kids have harder stuff to deal with and survival is the No. 1 thing they are focused on. We've created a situation where, for 2 hours after school they, don't have to worry about survival. They can just worry about being a kid and learning. Kids know that when they are at Group Excellence, they are safe. We've developed leadership program to mentor our tutors and we also bring in business professionals that mentor the tutors. We want to make sure that everybody leaves us better than they found us.
How has your upbringing affected your mission?
Both of my parents were born in Haiti and came to America not knowing how to speak English. My dad told me that if you want to overcome racism and prejudice, be excellent. Education is the foundation of possibility in America, so work hard. When I went back to visit Haiti I saw the poverty and realized that it could have been me. I see the opportunity I have and I don't want it to be said that I wasted this opportunity.
Any interesting facts about you? I’m fluent in French and I do magic.
Why do you do it?
I do it to touch lives. I do it because your income should not determine your outcome. I do it because somebody helped me. I do it for the students.
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG
PRESS
Minority Business News Texas Access Issue 2009
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG
PRESS
SMU Magazine Fall/Winter 2008
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG
CONTACT Group Excellence Corporate Headquarters – Group Excellence, Ltd 13111 North Central Expressway Suite 230 Dallas, TX 75243 214-570-3140 info@groupexcellence.org
Media Inquiries Adrian D. Parker, The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com c // 917-881-2643 o // 866-999-TPMG
CONTACT: Adrian D. Parker The Parker Marketing Group ap@theparkmark.com 866-999-TPMG