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Neil Sullivan first met John William Ward while he was a student at Amherst College in the late 1960s and Mr. Ward was a professor of American Studies there.  He describes himself then as a young man of eighteen who was open and ready to listen to whatever any intelligent adult had to say to him.  Ward found a very receptive student in him, and he a mentor in Ward.  John Ward, as those who were close to him at the time knew him by, would often tell Sullivan to have a meaning in life, no matter what he did, and would constantly ask him, “What’s your purpose?”

Taking Ward’s advice, Mr. Sullivan has made it his career to act for the betterment of other people’s lives.

Upon graduating from Amherst, the one thing Sullivan was sure of was that he did not want to go on to law school.  “Everyone was doing it,” he says, “and I just wanted to do something different.”  Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, his background was in the study of urban communities and the problems that they face.  He began his early years by teaching in public school for three and a half years.  Then, he moved back to Massachusetts and began to work for a Worcester-based community organization called the Massachusetts Fair Share.

Through his organization, Sullivan went door to door getting the members of different communities together to address the issues that affected everyone.  He and his group tried to take action against many major concerns, such as public safety and public utilities.  In 1982, after six years with the Massachusetts Fair Share, Sullivan took part in his first political campaign to get Ray Flynn elected Mayor of Boston.  When Mayor Flynn won the office, he hired Sullivan as his Chief Policy Advisor.  It has been Neil Sullivan’s goal to affect change in the lives of others.

He took the road less traveled in public service and never really worried about his level of “success” or how much money he was earning.

In following with Bill Ward’s mentoring, he believed that as long as he had enough money to live by and was doing work that held true meaning, he could want nothing else in life.  Mr. Sullivan is very proud that he can say he is happy to get up and go to work every morning and feel good about what he is doing – something that not everyone can.  In his position at the Private Industry Council, Mr. Sullivan is addressing the issues education and employment, and how the link between these two concepts is vital to one’s security in the future.  The PIC is working with Mayor Menino, Boston Public Schools Superintendent Payzant, and several local corporations to secure training, summer jobs, and on-the-job education for public high school students in Boston.  It functions under the premise that giving urban youth both an education and marketable job experience is the most effective way to ensure success for those who would otherwise be left without any opportunities.  His work with the youth of Boston is beyond commendable and truly lives up to Bill Ward’s words that “one must act as if one can make a difference.”

Mr. Sullivan, who recently turned 48, looks back at his life and divides the different phases of it into decades.  He began with the anti-war movement in the late sixties, next moved to grass roots community organizing in the seventies, and then on to involvement in Boston politics in the eighties.  He has had a varied career in the public sector and his most admirable quality is his incessant drive to focus his life on working for others.  Sullivan prizes his relationship with Bill Ward mostly due to the fact that Ward’s influence has directed his life and career toward to service for the common good. He is thankful to Ward’s memory for that.