Our Leaders

Mrs. Ann Stallard,
Chair, United Way of America

 Ann Stallard, a successful businesswoman for over 25 years, is a partner and executive vice president of Graphic Communications Corporation, located in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Graphic Communications Corporation, founded in 1972, is a full-service marketing and commercial printing company with 60 full time associates. The company now occupies a 66,000 square foot building and has grown to be one of metro Atlanta's top 25 printing companies out of a field of more than 700. Ms. Stallard started two other small businesses during her career, one a commercial art and design studio and the other a typesetting and graphic design company.

Ms. Stallard has been recognized often for her entrepreneurial leadership in Metropolitan Atlanta through articles in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Business Atlanta Magazine, Georgia Trend Magazine, Atlanta Woman and The Atlanta Business Chronicle. In 1991, the US Small Business Administration named Ms. Stallard as Georgia's Women-In Business Advocate of the Year. She has served on the White House National Initiative on Women's Business Ownership Task Force and, she was the first businesswoman to be elected National President of the YWCA in 1992. She is a graduate of Leadership Atlanta, a former member of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Task Force on Small Business and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.

Ann served as a member of the board of directors for United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, and co- founded Women's Legacy of United Way in 1999. She currently serves as the chair of United Way's National Women's Leadership Council. Ann also served on the global board of the World YWCA in Geneva, Switzerland, where she chaired the world nominating committee. The Atlanta YWCA selected Ms. Stallard as A Woman of Achievement in 1995.

Ms. Stallard is an active public speaker and published author on entrepreneurship, volunteerism and civic engagement especially on the issues of diversity, economic empowerment for women and the needs of children around the world.

A native of Wise County, Virginia, Ms. Stallard is a graduate of the University of Kentucky where she was selected as the Outstanding Alumna, 2001. She is also a member of the All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta and one of the creators of the church's Public Policy Network.

Brian A. Gallagher
President and CEO, United Way of America

Brian Gallagher became President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way of America in 2002 and immediately took on the challenge of leading the transformation of the organization to focus on community impact. A career veteran of the United Way system, Gallagher believes that the true measure of success for United Way and other philanthropic organizations is bottom-line results: the lives that are changed and the communities that are shaped. This represents a dynamic shift from the United Way recognized for decades as the nation’s premier fund raiser and distributor. Today, Gallagher has raised the bar on the accountability, governance and transparency standards adopted as a requirement of membership for each of the 1,300 local United Ways across the country.

He began his career with United Way in 1981 as a management trainee, later working in various positions in United Ways around the country including Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Reading, Pennsylvania; Providence, Rhode Island; and Atlanta, Georgia. He most recently served as president of United Way of Central Ohio (UWCO) in Columbus, where he had first-hand experience with community impact, creating a very successful Family Housing Collaborative, which works simultaneously to obtain low cost housing while providing day care and job training so that the cycle of homelessness is broken.

Gallagher was born in Chicago and grew up in Hobart, Indiana. He received his bachelor’s degree in social work from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, in 1981 and earned a master’s degree in business administration from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992. In May 2003 Gallagher received an honorary Doctor of Humanities from his alma mater, Ball State University.