Profile

Phillip Page is Bay Path University’s Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and has served in a leadership role in their collaboration with the Mel King Institute. Although he has spent the last 18 years working in higher education, Phillip comes from a diverse professional background that stretches from for-profit, nonprofit, design, and construction. Throughout his career, a throughline for Phillip has been his dedication to community building. He explains that shaping physical space as an architect and urban designer was what first inspired him to get involved with community building work:

“becoming an architect was something that I wanted to do since I was a little kid, so I was fortunate to be able to… graduate and become licensed as an architect. The [main] interest I had as an architect was around the impact of the work within the communities being served, and over time the perspective that every community deserved the benefits of good, sound, thoughtful, and conscientious planning.”

While Phillip moved away from architecture in the early 2000s, he remained dedicated to community building work in the nonprofit space with The Partnership Inc., an organization that was “focused on ensuring that professionals of color had opportunities to advance and grow into senior level positions of power and authority in the organizations that they served, while also creating a community among [them].” He has also served on the Madison Park Development Corporation board of directors and volunteered and advised at other organizations in Greater Boston.

Phillip learned about the Mel King Institute while volunteering with the Alliance, a group dedicated to empowering and supporting diverse leaders within the community development space “with the idea that they could be the next generation of leaders that would influence the good work that was being done by community-based organizations.” Through the Alliance, he first met and worked with Shirronda Almeida, now the Director of Mel King Institute, and learned about our trainings and work.

Several years later, Mass Growth Capital Corporation (now MassDevelopment) reached out to Cambridge College’s business school faculty with the idea to collaboratively launch a course for small business technical assistance providers. While Phillip did help bring the two organizations together–eventually including the Mel King Institute as a partner for the initiative—he states that he was more involved in the “strategic execution” of the partnership.

This collaboration between MKI, Cambridge College (now merged with Bay Path University), and MassDevelopment eventually resulted in the Business Development Certificate Program: a twelve-session course designed to help small business technical assistance providers hone their skills and learn new strategies to help entrepreneurs thrive. Phillip and his team at Bay Path’s Office of Partnership Development stay actively engaged with participants throughout the course providing student consultation, maintaining the platform the course is delivered through, managing administration and evaluating results.

Looking forward, Phillip hopes to build upon the collaborative process used to develop the Business Development Certificate Program, to create similar learning opportunities with other organizations. He mentions that one example of this is the recently launched Latino Professional Leadership Institute (a program shaped with the Latino Economic Development Council), which was designed to provide “entrepreneurial training to business owners of Latino descent in Western Massachusetts.”

In his free time, Phillip enjoys spending time with his family and tries to stay injury free as an active pick-up basketball fan.

Sign up for the Business Development Certificate Program here.