Our Team

Executive Director, Dennis Gaddy

Dennis Gaddy is a man with a mission — a mission of helping others to be their best, and for the last 19 years, Dennis has refined his skills that have led him into the field of success coaching, training, and consulting people, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor, or socio-economic status.

Dennis is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill (1979), and the Campbell University School of Law (l982). Dennis began a career in Sales Management in 1985, has built sales organizations of over 20,000 strong, and has experienced financial success. However, due to some poor financial decisions, Dennis has also experienced the pain of bankruptcy, the loss of a law license, and five years, eight months in prison. But rather than being overcome by either success or failure, Dennis has carefully studied both, and has learned valuable and positive insights from the past. He has learned the value of using the past as a place of "reference, but not residence." Dennis has designed and teaches a 15-Step Leadership Course on "How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be," and coordinates classes on entrepreurship and leadership.

Dennis places special emphasis in the areas of: Goal-setting, developing and maintaining a pleasing personality and a positive mental attitude, time management skills, and keys to optimum vision and leadership

While incarcerated, Dennis worked with the chaplain at Wake Correctional to structure a personal development and leadership class for the inmates, a class he taught for more than two years. It was during this time that he designed the 15 Principles of Personal Growth and Leadership — a set of core principles used as a foundation for his work through the Community Success Initiative, a non-profit organization that he co-founded in 2004. Dennis provides personal and leadership development training, with a particular focus on prisoners, former prisoners, their families, youth and young adults, and focuses on small group trainings and individual coaching relationships with people in and out of prison, as well as issues related to leadership, financial literacy, and general life skills as they relate to people transitioning back into family and community life.

Along with his training duties, Dennis serves as a member of the Triangle Lost Generation Task Force founded in January 2005 to examine and promote community-based strategies and communications tools to address and reduce the high and disproportionate number of African American youth who receive long jail and prison sentences. He is also President of his family business — Gaddy Success Enterprises.

Dennis has been married for 22 years, and he and his wife have two teenage daughters.