DAE WELCOMES NEW BOARD MEMBERS

DAE, a Connecticut nonprofit democratizing access to 21st century digital career and life skills for underrepresented youth, has announced the addition of two new board members: Claire O”™Hare of New Canaan, and Stuart Sidle, Ph.D. of Hamden, who will be instrumental in guiding DAE”™s mission to equip young people with the skills, mindsets, and interpersonal capabilities needed to be successful upon graduation and form healthy, humane communities.

 O”™Hare has spent her career building nascent businesses into industry leaders. She joined Facebook in 2008 where she launched and led sales development and strategy for the rapidly growing global sales teams. On the management side, O”™Hare created tentpole programs to increase engagement and alignment between Facebook and its customers, catapulting the company into the upper echelon of partners for the world”™s largest advertisers. She is perhaps best known, however, for the development of the Client Council, a first-of-its-kind business collaboration between Facebook and its most influential global marketing partners.

Prior to Facebook, O”™Hare launched Yahoo!”™s first sales training and executive leadership development initiative, YES (Yahoo! Enrichment Series). She also founded Livewell Design, an e-commerce fine jewelry line, which scaled to over $3 million in sales and was sold to OpenStore in January 2022. Early this year, O”™Hare created COH & Co, a consulting firm based on her mantra “you can”™t create the future without trust.” 

An industrial-organizational psychologist, Sidle is the dean of social and behavioral sciences and a professor at Mercy College. In addition to these roles, he is currently directing a significant government grant-funded initiative designed to increase the number of Hispanic and low-income students attaining degrees in STEM majors. Sidle was previously at the University of New Haven, where he wore many hats. He also held faculty positions at DePaul University and Saint Xavier University.

Sidle”™s research interests include the impact of leadership behavior on worker job satisfaction, engagement, and job stress, leadership assessment and development, employee surveys, and stereotyping in the employee selection process. 

Open to all high school students, DAE”™s programming is designed to both rapidly increase the mastery of technology skills and develop the personal and interpersonal skills required to form healthy and humane communities and workplaces. With a 91% retention rate, the nonprofit is giving students the tools and support needed to shape their own future and the world around them.

 DAE is located within the Synchrony Skills Academy at 777 Long Ridge Road in Stamford and at 770 Chapel St. in New Haven.