16 | GREENVILLE JOURNAL | 05.13.2016 GREENVILLEJOURNAL.COM
COMMUNITY
journey when they are 6 years old. We have about 100 students and provide therapy for 180 children. Our children come from Greenville, Pickens and Laurens counties, and we even have buses we send out to meet parents in Simpsonville. We’re a charter school that operates in coordination with Greenville County Schools.
What’s your professional background? I learned the importance of the intersection of business and politics while working for the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce from 1988 to 1990. After graduating from USC in 1990, I was the guy who dealt with constituents in Gov. Carroll Campbell’s office. It was a great experience. In 1994, I was political director for the state’s Republican Party and worked with David Wilkins on campaigns. It was the year Republicans took over the state legislature. Wilkins’ wife, Susan, is a Meyer Center emeritus; she’s an ambassador for us in the community. So it goes to show you that those early relationships come back. After this, I ran former Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential primary campaign in South Carolina.
BOUNDARIES, LIMITS, OBSTACLES
And then what?
New Meyer Center leader Chris Neeley brings Bronze Star experience to organization’s mission MELINDA YOUNG | CONTRIBUTOR
myoung@communityjournals.com
Chris Neeley’s path to becoming The Meyer Center’s new executive director took him through the thick of South Carolina’s Republican politics, into the heart of corporate America and across the world to Afghanistan, where he earned a Bronze Star. But if Neeley were to pinpoint one moment when his life seemed destined to include work with a nonprofit that helps children with learning disabilities, it would be when he was a teenager and created his own “Special Olympics” as part of an Eagle Scout project. Neeley’s family includes his wife, Janie; a daughter, Jordan, who will be graduating high school this spring and plans to attend the Citadel to run track and field; an 11-year-old son, Tucker, who will attend Beck Academy next year and a 7-month-old baby, Marshall, who has Down syndrome. The Greenville Journal asked Neeley about his life and his vision for the Meyer Center, which has been helping babies and young children with learning challenges in Greenville since the 1950s.
Who is Chris Neeley, and why did you come to the Meyer Center?
I was born and raised in Columbia and
went to Carolina. My family has been in South Carolina for eight generations. In 2012, I made a corporate move with Walmart to Arkansas, and I worked for their corporate office until two years ago when I left to manage Made in USA Works to help companies come back from China to the U.S. and create manufacturing jobs here. On Oct. 6, 2015, we had our third child, Marsh, who has Down syndrome. He spent six weeks in the hospital. He was born early and had to have surgery. Marsh transformed our lives. It was a game changer, because I had started evaluating my work in the corporate world and the work-life balance, and when we had a child with Down syndrome, I decided I needed a new focus, purpose and passion. That’s when I saw the announcement that the Meyer Center was looking for a new executive director through a national search.
What does the Meyer Center do especially well?
We learned quickly after Marsh was born that these children have to have early intervention in terms of therapies. They need a lot of different therapies, including occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy, and you want therapy to start while they’re infants because that gives them a head start and helps them with eating, walk-
ing and mobility. Where we lived in Arkansas, the problem was that all of Marsh’s therapies were a 55-minute drive away and not in the same location. What’s unique about the Meyer Center is we provide all the therapies under one roof. And we also provide education. Children receive early childhood education and therapies in one place, so parents don’t have to drive all over town to meet all these appointments. The goal is to give the children a foundation so they can go to public schools and start their next
I worked in politics and then for WalMart until 9/11, when I joined the Navy, working at the Navy War College in Rhode Island, training senior officers how to do press conferences and media interviews. In 2009, I left the Navy with an honorable discharge and joined the Army National Guard in May. Then on Jan. 3, 2010, I was deployed to Afghanistan with a unit from South Carolina, the 1-178th Field Artillery Battalion, which is a Lowcountry unit around Georgetown. Our battalion provided security forces for 13 provinces in Afghanistan, including Kabul province, which is the capital of Afghanistan. We worked with tribal leaders and elders to build schools for children, provide humanitarian aid and provide work for Afghan men so they wouldn’t go to work for the Taliban. I re-
“The Meyer Center has done a great job getting to where it is today, a first-class therapeutic institution for children with disabilities, and I want to build on that foundation.” Chris Neeley, executive director, The Meyer Center