6 Alums Named to University Foundation’s Board
Trustees to Advise Leadership, Advocate for UMD Priorities
Six accomplished Terps were elected to serve a three-year term on the University of Maryland College Park Foundation’s Board of Trustees: Leonard J. Elmore ’74, Ashley Manning Foxworth ’06, Harry L. Geller ’81, Ellen F. Gaske ’75, Singleton B. McAllister ’75 and Alexander Mehr M.S. ’03, Ph.D. ’03.
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle
Six esteemed alums with careers spanning the worlds of business, sports, law and education have been named trustees of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, starting on July 1.
Leonard J. Elmore ’74, Ashley Manning Foxworth ’06, Harry L. Geller ’81, Ellen F. Gaske ’75, Singleton B. McAllister ’75 and Alexander Mehr M.S. ’03, Ph.D. ’03 will serve as ambassadors for the university and advisers to university leadership through their modeling and promotion of philanthropic support, oversight of the endowment, and advocacy to state and federal lawmakers.
“The university is delighted and honored to have men and women of such high accomplishment and character join the Board of Trustees,” said Vice President for University Relations Brodie Remington, who also serves as president of the foundation. “They will be adding experience and talent to an exceptional board that has been pivotal to the university’s rise to preeminence, nationally and globally.”
Paul Mandell ’95, who chairs the foundation board, said the new trustees bring with them a “dazzling” array of personal and professional accomplishments.
“I am excited by the many positive impacts they will have on our foundation and the university,” he said.
Board members are selected by a nominating committee composed of eight current board members. Each of the following Terps was elected to serve a three-year term:
Leonard J. Elmore ’74 is a former All-American and professional basketball player who now is a senior lecturer in sports management at Columbia University.
At Maryland, he was named all-ACC three times and helped lead the Terps to the 1972 NIT championship. He played a decade with the American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association, then began a 31-year career as a TV sports announcer. Elmore also earned a law degree from Harvard and embarked on a career as an attorney.
He and his wife, Gail ’75, established the Gail Segal Elmore and Leonard Elmore Scholarship at Maryland for student-athletes in finance or economics; they also were co-chairs of the Bold Vision Bright Futures fundraising campaign. In addition, Elmore was a foundation trustee (1990-98), volunteer with the Great Expectations campaign and member of the President’s Cabinet and University System of Maryland Foundation board.
Elmore was inducted into the University of Maryland Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Alumni Association Hall of Fame in 2020.
He previously served on the boards of 1800Flowers.com and Lee Enterprises and was chairman of the board and executive director of the National Basketball Retired Players Association. He is now a member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
He and Gail, a UMCPF trustee since 2015, have two grown sons, Stephen and Matthew, and live in New York City.
Ashley Manning Foxworth ’06 is a philanthropist overseeing the Foxworth Family Fund and an advocate for education.
She and her husband, Domonique ’04, a former NFL player, established the Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative, amplifying the College of Arts and Humanities’ efforts to apply skills learned there to real-world challenges, and the Foxworth Do Good Internship Endowed Scholarship. The couple also supports the college’s Dean’s Fund for Excellence.
A former Honors College student, Teach for America alum and Harvard Law School and Harvard Graduate School of Education graduate, Foxworth is a member of the college’s Dean’s Cabinet and was a member of the college’s Fearless Ideas campaign.
The Foxworths and their three children live in Washington, D.C.
Ellen F. Gaske ’75 is a longtime educator who has been senior vice president for academics at Specialized Education Services, Inc. since 2014.
During a career spanning more than 40 years, she has conducted extensive training in reading for general and special education teachers, working in Howard County Public Schools and Johns Hopkins University, and as chief school director of special education programs and as executive director for grades 3-12 of High Road Academy. She is also a former board member for the Maryland Association of Nonpublic Special Education Facilities.
At Maryland, she and her husband, Paul ’76, created the Ellen and Paul Gaske Current-Use Program Support Fund for Terps EXCEED in the College of Education; the T. Paul and Ellen Gaske Maryland Promise Scholarship; and the Ellen Gaske Scholarship in Special Education. They also have supported the Sustainable Cyber Physical Systems Lab and the A. James Clark School of Engineering Dean’s Fund. She has been a member of the College of Education Board of Visitors since 2020.
The Gaskes live in Rockville, Md.
Harry L. Geller ’81 is an entrepreneur who has founded more than a dozen multimillion-dollar companies, most recently, Grip Boost. At UMD, he is known as a supporter of Maryland Athletics and as entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert H. Smith School of Business’ Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship since 2009. He is also an entrepreneur-in-residence for UM Ventures, serving the faculty at Maryland as well as local HBCUs Bowie State, Coppin State and Morgan State universities.
He is a major donor to the Dingman Center, the Ladies First Initiative, the Basketball Performance Center, Terrapin Club scholarships, Maryland Basketball All-Access and Friends of Maryland Football. Geller is also a member of the Dingman Center board and a former member of the President’s Cabinet. He was a foundation trustee from 2015-21.
He and his wife, Nicole Geller, live in McLean, Va. They have two grown children, Jackson and Wil.
Singleton B. McAllister ’75 has been an attorney at Husch Blackwell in Great Falls., Va., since 2014. She previously held that role at Williams Mullen, and from 1996-2001 was general counsel of the U.S. Agency for International Development, serving as chief legal adviser to 72 missions around the world.
She returns to the foundation’s board after four years there starting in 2008. She also was a member of the President’s Cabinet from 2004-07, is a member of the Black Alumni Club and has sat on the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences’ Board of Visitors since 2006.
McAllister supports the university’s Parren J. Mitchell Legacy Fund. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., she was awarded the 2014 Department of Fraternity and Sorority Life’s Centennial Award, which honors alums who have made significant contributions to their sorority or fraternity chapter.
She serves on the boards of Alliant Energy Corp., the National Women’s History Museum, Howard University School of Law and Chart Industries. She is former chair of the National Women’s Business Center, past president of Women in Government Relations and a former board member of Port Discovery Children’s Museum in Baltimore. She served a term as secretary to the Virginia State Board of Elections.
McAllister and her husband, Emmit McHenry, live in Great Falls, Va.
Alexander Mehr M.S. ’03, Ph.D. ’03 is an entrepreneur and revitalizer of household brands in his role as co-founder and CEO of Retail E-Commerce Ventures.
A former research scientist with NASA, Mehr founded and later sold the online dating site Zoosk with Shayan Zadeh M.S. ’02. Today, the pair owns companies including Pier 1 Imports, RadioShack, Dressbarn and Modell’s Sporting Goods.
As a new mechanical engineering graduate, Mehr received the A. James Clark School of Engineering’s Early Career Award. He went on to create the Alex Mehr Endowed Distinguished Graduate Fellowship and to support the Design Decision Support Laboratory Research and Education Fund.
He lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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