James E. Nevels, founder and chairman of The Swarthmore Group and chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, will receive the Eighth Annual Musser Award for Excellence in Leadership on October 27 at an awards dinner and ceremony presented by Temple’s Fox School of Business and Management.
Nevels was selected for The Fox School’s most prestigious award because of his outstanding business success and leadership for education reform in America's urban areas.
Upon announcing the Award, Dean M. Moshe Porat of The Fox School said, "Jim Nevels is an outstanding and all too rare role model for exemplary leadership in Greater Philadelphia and at the national level."
"Coming from humble beginnings, he is a great example of the value of education in personal development and the commitment of time, energy, and effort to the needs of our community."
The Musser Award promotes the ethic that exceptional achievement in business and exceptional effort on behalf of the community are compatible, mutually supportive goals. The award is named after its first recipient, Warren V. (Pete) Musser, founder of Safeguard Scientifics, who endowed the award in 1998.
In 1991, Mr. Nevels founded The Swarthmore Group, an independent investment and financial advisory firm that has grown to be one of the largest minority-owned firms in the United States and among the 500 largest asset management firms in the country.
Prior to starting The Swarthmore Group, Mr. Nevels was an investment banker at Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co., Inc. and Prudential Bache Securities, Inc. Mr. Nevels also practiced law as counsel in bond transactions with the law firm Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll.
Mr. Nevels was appointed a member of the three-person Board of Control of The Chester-Upland School District in 1998 to administer the $65 million budget of this state-declared financially distressed school district and served as a gubernatorial appointee on that Board until 2001. In December 2001, the Governor of Pennsylvania appointed Mr. Nevels as Chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, an enterprise having a $1.8 billion budget. The Commission oversees the turnaround of the financially distressed Philadelphia School System, the seventh largest school district in the United States.
Mr. Nevels is an honors (cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) graduate of Bucknell University, and holds an A.B. degree in Political Science and Philosophy. In addition, he earned two advanced degrees at the University of Pennsylvania -- an M.B.A. degree from the Wharton School and a J.D. degree from the Law School. Mr. Nevels currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Bucknell University and on the Board’s Executive Committee, as a member of the Board of Berea College, the Board of Visitors for Temple University's Fox School of Business and Management and the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also is Treasurer and a member of the Board of the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities.
For more information about sponsorship opportunities and dinner registration, visit www.fox.temple.edu/musser04 or call 215.204.8118.
