We’re all familiar with the African Proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” City of Dallas Chief of Staff Kim Tolbert suggests that St. Philip’s is raising the village. This book is about St. Philip’s School AND Community Center and how my life experiences informed my role in making it what it is today. St. Philip’s School AND Community Center is a driver of academic excellence and school-based community transformation. St. Philip’s serves as an anchor, an advocate, and an agent of change for Dallas and commands the attention of cities across the nation. St. Philip’s has been a catalyst for disrupting the downward spiral of blight and deterioration in the neighborhood surrounding it. Most importantly, this school AND community center develops and dispatches students throughout society and charges them to uplift humanity. These students are drivers from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with ninety-three percent of the graduates from our small PreK – 6th-grade Christian school going to college and positioned to lead change in America worldwide. This book, “Why I Do What I Do”, is not only about St. Philip’s. It is about the ability of schools to drive community transformation. In my quest to constantly remind everyone to give God the glory, I have consistently resisted placing light on me. You will learn about my being reared in gang-ridden Chicago by a widowed mother of five children, after my father was shot and later died. You’ll learn about the services, programs, and vision of a small but mighty urban school. You will learn not only Why I Do What I Do, but How We Did It. One of our mantras at St. Philip’s is “A day without learning is a day wasted.” “Once you know, you owe.” It is my prayer that this book will compel its readers to know, owe, and become School Drivers. I am heavenly humbled to have had the opportunity to serve and lead the St. Philip’s ministry. It has been gratifying to witness its growing pains, celebrate its accomplishments and anticipate its best, which is yet to come.