Our Leadership
Staff
Emily Mallozzi
Chief Operating OfficerEmily Mallozzi is an accomplished systems thinker and efficiency expert with over a decade of experience driving organizational excellence. She has proven success in translating high-level vision and program strategies into actionable requirements for innovative tech-enabled solutions. She is adept at optimizing processes, facilitating change initiatives, leading high-functioning teams and fostering positive workplace culture.
Emily has spent her career working for mission-driven organizations cultivating a passion for aligning people, processes and tools to make an organization thrive. Emily enjoys spending time with family (pets included) in the outdoors. Her interests include traveling, connecting with nature, and staying active. Emily holds a Master’s Degree from Syracuse University in International Relations with a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Conflict Resolution, and currently resides in the Washington, DC area.
NextGen Thriving was formed to serve and empower youth who are underserved because of the life experiences and passions of the Ricks family. Richard Ricks, his wife Janice and daughter Missy were the loving and proud family of Patrick, their beautiful son and brother who was born with developmental disabilities. Richard founded Silver Tree Consulting & Services with the dream of eventually establishing a foundation to donate 50% of its profits to this cause.
Board of Directors
Richard Ricks
ChairmanRichard Ricks is the founder of Silver Tree Consulting & Services, formed to serve and empower youth who are underserved because of the passion and life experiences of the Ricks family, including humble beginnings and a beautiful son and brother, Patrick, who was born with disabilities. Richard founded Silver Tree Consulting & Services in order to establish a foundation to donate 50% of its profits to this cause – a lifelong dream of Richard Ricks. He is responsible for the company’s strategic plan, consulting partners and assuring client relationships are excellent. He is a highly accomplished information technology and services executive who has led many successful transformations. As previous CIO of Nortel Networks and president of many divisions of CSC’s commercial businesses, he is recognized for his leadership in driving business, operations, and technology transformations that deliver excellent results – True Value.
Richard received an Executive Business Diploma from Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and N.C. State University Mechanical Engineering. He received post-graduate training in negotiations from Harvard Business School. Richard is very involved in the community as an elder at his local church. He is married to Janice Ricks. They have two children, their son, who is with the Lord and Melissa Ricks.
Lauren Holt
Vice ChairLauren Holt is Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer for Silver Tree Consulting & Services, assures the company’s financial, business and resource management enables our accelerated growth aspirations. She is responsible for the company’s financial reporting, accounting, tax, information systems, human resources functions and administrative processes and efficiencies. Her drive for results, progress and continual improvement are essential for her roles at Silver Tree. Lauren joined Silver Tree in early 2022. Prior to joining Silver Tree, at Pureflow, Inc. (a manufacturing and service company) she served as CFO on the executive leadership team, responsible for the finance, human resource compliance and materials management. Lauren began her finance career in public accounting where she spent eight years in client facing and collaborative roles ranging from non-profit, health care, technology and manufacturing and services.
She attended North Carolina State University and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. As a lifelong learner, during Lauren’s professional career, she was privileged to lead, attend and graduate from Thayer Leadership, a West Point Military Academy Development Program; the premise of this program is to courageously enact change, master opposition, foster productivity and respond decisively enabling leadership demonstration daily. Lauren is also a graduate of Center for Creative Leadership, Executive Leadership Program, where leadership training is targeted to senior leaders enabling them to build networks, raise self-awareness, shift perspectives with the objective to help steer their respective organizations to tomorrow.
Lauren resides in the Triad of North Carolina with her husband, Joseph, and their two children, Grant and Josi Anne.
Tony Doye
TreasurerTony Doye leads Silver Tree’s solutions and services to the Non-Profit sector. Doye’s career intersected with the executives of Silver Tree working together at Computer Sciences Corporation, Unisys and CompuCom before he began his work at Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) and prior to Richard Ricks founding Silver Tree Services. The team is now back together making a difference for non-profits. Tony joined GSUSA in 2014 as its interim chief information officer and stepped into the chief operating officer position in April 2015. As COO, Tony led a team tasked with improving role clarity and accountability and that focused on the drivers of GSUSA’s business, including diversification of revenue, fund development growth, enhancement of the customer experience, and the effective execution of GSUSA’s strategic initiatives.
Backed by more than 25 years of management and customer service experience, prior to Girl Scouts Tony was CEO of CompuCom Systems, Inc., a leader in the IT outsourcing field. There he oversaw the corporate direction and strategy of the company as it advanced its mission of transforming the delivery of IT services. Before joining CompuCom in November 2012, Tony served as president and CEO of Fujitsu North America, where he was responsible for the North American outsourcing portfolio; and prior to that, he was president of global outsourcing and managed services for Unisys Corporation, driving growth in the company’s outsourcing and infrastructure service businesses. Tony also spent ten years with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), where he held numerous global leadership roles in IT services, IT outsourcing, application outsourcing, and consulting services.
Tony began his career with IBM in a variety of customer service, services management, and global project executive roles spanning 20 years. His educational background includes completion of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Executive Program, and he attended Cambridge University’s management summer program for executives while working for IBM.
Melissa Ricks
SecretaryMelissa Ricks is the daughter of Richard and Janice Ricks. The foundation is very close to her heart. Growing up with a brother who was disabled was challenging for her and her parents. Witnessing the disadvantages her brother faced daily made her continually look outward to others who faced a lack of opportunity. As a result, she is very passionate about the foundation, as it not only gives back to the community – offering youth opportunities not available to them – but also equips and empowers them.
Melissa lives in Durham County, North Carolina with her rescue dog, Bella. She manages a yoga studio in Fuquay-Varina and is an office administrator at Silver Tree Consulting & Services. She fell in love with yoga at 15 years old. Fitness is as a way of life for her, whether it is yoga, weightlifting, hiking or other activities outside, especially with Bella.
Janice Ricks
Board MemberJanice Ricks is the life partner and wife of Richard, and mother of Melissa Ricks Greer. She has been fundamental in enabling their shared dream of serving and creating opportunity for youth with special needs. She was the caregiver for their disabled son Patrick for his entire life and is quite familiar with the challenges youth who are disabled have in being given opportunity to use their awesome God-given gifts. As a constant volunteer at churches and non-profits, Janice demonstrates her servants heart continuously. She will play a key role in the assessment of grants and help guide the Foundation in how it can best serve the youth the foundation services.
Pastor Todd Cullen
Board MemberPastor Todd Cullen serves on the Foundation Board to help provide young people with a greater opportunity for achievement and success in life. He grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, where at the age of 16 he realized that God wanted him to be in full-time ministry. He attended Liberty University and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. Todd and Cynthia met at LU and were married in 1995. Todd did not begin in full-time ministry till years later after college and really struggled to understand what God’s plan was for his life.
He had the opportunity to work as a consultant for John Maxwell in the late 90‘s which helped him understand the needs of the local church. God used this experience to instill a passion for local church ministry within him. He started in full-time ministry in 2002 as the Small Groups Pastor at NorthStar Church in Kennesaw, Georgia where Cynthia was already serving as the Worship Director.
In 2005, Todd and Cynthia felt led to move to New York City to plant a church in Manhattan with a team of people called the Gallery Church. It was his spiritual mentor and former youth pastor, Jeff Cranston, who asked Todd and Cynthia to move to Hilton Head Island to plant a new campus of LowCountry Community Church in 2007. LCC birthed this campus in 2011 and Hilton Head Island Community Church became its own independent congregation. At this time, Todd is completing his Masters of Arts in Ministry at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Sarah Takatani
Board MemberSarah Takatani is the executive vice president and head of technology & integrated services for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. In this role, she supports foundation efforts to promote thriving children, working families and equitable communities.
Takatani provides overall leadership as the head of the foundation’s integrated systems and technology functions, which includes the operational execution and strategic development of enterprise systems, knowledge, data, learning, security and support. As a member of the executive team, Takatani also provides leadership and direction to ensure consistent and fair application of policies, philosophies and organization-wide systems in an effort to fulfill the foundation’s mission.
Originally from Hawaii, Takatani was hired by IBM in 1997 as a software engineer and coded IBM’s first e-commerce website. In 1999, she moved into a diversity program manager role to stand up IBM’s first diversity councils and employee affinity groups. Following that role, she quickly became a change agent integrating technology and business and one of IBM’s youngest female executives, leading 25,000 team members, managing seven global labs, and driving $1.7 billion in revenue.
In 2014, she made a career decision to move to nonprofit and transform the $860 million Girl Scout Cookie Program for 1.8 million girls – taking it digital! The launch of “Digital Cookie” garnered 4 billion media impressions with Sarah quoted in the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and more, as well as recognitions that included a place in Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Nonprofits. Following Girl Scouts, Sarah led multiple non-profit transformations as CIO, including Year Up to empower nearly 5,000 young adults every year to reach their potential through careers and higher education, and Save the Children to make a difference in over 197 million children’s lives annually across 100+ countries. During this time, she was recognized as CIO of the Year by InspireCIO for human-centered design and data-driven outcomes.
Sarah is passionate about delivering social impact at scale and was honored with a U.S. Congressional Award for her work with historically marginalized youth. In October 2024, Sarah took the next step in this journey and joined the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as executive vice president and head of technology & integrated services to apply her 25+ years of expertise in business transformation, digital innovation, and operational integration to partner with communities where children come first.
Sarah earned her MBA from Cornell University, BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Gold Award from Girl Scouts of the USA. She regularly serves as a motivational keynote speaker and on multiple governing boards, including United Nations Association, NetHope, Polaris, and NextGen Thriving. Additionally, she is an entrepreneur, having established a salsa dance studio after retiring as a professional salsa dancer and founded a performing arts coffee house as a gathering place for local artists. At home, she is a loving mother to three daughters and the proud fiancée of a dedicated first responder firefighter.