Anthony Blake
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Anthony Blake (b. 1968) is the founder and Executive Director of Milestones Educational Consulting, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which was established on June 5, 2006, one year prior to the 50th Anniversary of Independent School Placement. Milestones' mission is to help inner-city students reach their full academic and social promise at independent boarding schools. Working closely with independent school administrators, education advisers, placement agencies and families, Milestones encourages students to discover and pursue their passions and life goals while striving for academic excellence. By focusing on each student's personal assets, Milestones enables students to develop, distinguish and market their personal brands. Blake, is an alumnus of both The Boys Club of New York (BCNY) Independent School Placement Program founded in 1957, and A Better Chance founded in 1963, two of the first organizations to place inner-city boys and girls into some of the finest independent boarding schools throughout the United States of America.
[edit] Biography
Blake grew up in the Thomas Jefferson public housing projects in East Harlem, New York and attended public schools until 1979 when he earned an academic scholarship to attend the American Boychoir School (ABS) in Princeton, New Jersey. While at the ABS, Blake traveled across the United States and Canada singing secular and non-secular music in over four languages, and performed as an alto on the George Frideric Handel’s Messiah album recorded at the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., December 15-20, 1980 with the Smithsonian Chamber Players. Upon graduation from ABS in 1982, Blake attended the Kent School, Kent, CT where he received his high school diploma in 1986, and also earned six varsity letters in football, basketball and lacrosse. From 1986 to 1987, Blake worked as an order clerk for Prudential Bache Securities on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. In 1989 Blake became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate fraternity established by African-Americans. Blake went on to receive his B.S. in 1992 from New York University, Stern School of Business, and from 1992 to 1993 he worked as a Graduate Assistant in for former NYU President and current NYU President Emeritus Dr. L. Jay Oliva. Blake completed his M.A. in 1995 from New York University, Steinhardt School of Education.
From 1993 to 1996 Blake spent three years as a public school teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, and from 1996 to 2006 he served BCNY as Assistant Education Director, Camp Director and Director of Educational Services and Summer Programs, where he helped to place and support over four hundred inner-city students in over seventy-five independent boarding schools, doubled the size of the Robert M. Gardiner school camp program and helped to build, The Academic All-Stars Holiday Classic, into one of the most prestigious prep-school basketball tournaments in the United States, while maintaining retention rates of over 90% in all of the programs under his supervision.
