Berean's legacy in job training to continue after state sells it to PTTI

SHERMAN McLEOD didn't know the distinguished-looking gentleman who greeted him as he walked along Chestnut Street one day in the late 1970s.

McLeod, then about 19, was wearing a Drexel University shirt when a towering man with a friendly smile and strong handshake said hello.

"He spoke to me like he had known me forever," McLeod recalled.

"He asked me how things were going in college. He said, 'Everything going all right? How do you like it at Drexel?' "

McLeod said he told the man he was doing well and liked Drexel a lot. This was after he had struggled during his first year until a mentor helped him.

The powerfully built, well-dressed man asked McLeod his name, but didn't volunteer his own. Later that evening, McLeod told an aunt he had met someone very important.

After describing the man "to a T," McLeod's aunt told him: "That was Rev. Leon Sullivan."

McLeod, now 56, told that story while discussing plans for the expansion of his Philadelphia Technician Training Institute at the historic Berean Institute in North Philadelphia.

The new school will be named Philadelphia Technician Training at Berean, he said.

PTTI purchased Berean, on Girard Avenue near 19th Street, for $2.2 million late last month.

A spokeswoman for state Sen. Shirley Kitchen confirmed that the state sold the property to PTTI.

McLeod, founder and CEO of PTTI, said his original school started on Ogontz Avenue near Washington Lane in 2008.

The nonprofit PTTI offers six-month courses in welding, automotive technology and advanced manufacturing, which includes industrial electrician training.

Renovations are underway at Berean, where the basketball floor in Berean's 6,000 square-foot gymnasium has already been removed to make way for 100 booths for welding instruction.

McLeod said the PTTI courses are six months long and students may qualify for the same federal loans and grants provided for two-year and four-year college programs.

McLeod and his director of education, Don Jackson, said they developed the program so that students can get training in less time and at a lower tuition cost than at most two-year technical schools or four-year colleges.

Some students have graduated and earned salaries of up to $100,000, McLeod said. The tuition is about $14,400 for a six-month program.

McLeod said that before buying Berean, he read about the Rev. Matthew Anderson and his wife, Caroline Still Anderson, who started the school in 1899 to help poor black migrants from the South become tailors and carpenters.

He also thinks often of meeting Sullivan, the late pastor of Zion Baptist Church, an internationally known activist, who established the Sullivan Principles to fight apartheid in South Africa. Sullivan also pushed job training and created the Opportunities Industrialization Centers to help poor people get job training.

McLeod called Sullivan's book Build Brother Build: From Poverty to Economic Power "a blueprint" for strengthening communities.

Now, it's as though those historic figures from the Andersons to Sullivan "have passed the baton on to me," he said.

State Sen. Kitchen wasn't available yesterday, but spokeswoman Kentia Waters said the senator "supports any institution that offers hope and promise through jobs . . . Especially those that offer training and livable wages. It's good for the community."

McLeod said the Ogontz Avenue school would educate about 250 people this year. He said he expects up to 2,000 students to graduate from Philadelphia Technician Training at Berean over the next three years.

In the last eight years, he said, the school has had about an 80 percent job-placement rate.

On Tuesday, McLeod said, "I just learned that one of our graduates got a job today at Conshohocken Steel." The young man, who had been unemployed, will be paid $16 per hour immediately.

After some renovations, McLeod and his business partner Don Jackson plan to open Philadelphia Technician Training at Berean by January.

McLeod grew up in North Philadelphia and dropped out of school after a family crisis. He earned a GED at 16. Then, after a year at Community College of Philadelphia, he got accepted at Drexel.

At first, Drexel was a struggle. But one instructor helped him over a rough period and he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering.

After Drexel, McLeod worked for a couple of corporations before ending up at Johnson & Johnson Medical as an engineer on an upper-management fast track.

After a corporate-leadership training program, McLeod said, he told his bosses that he wanted to return to Philadelphia from New Jersey to start a school to help young people. His first venture was to open a car-repair shop where he started training young people to be mechanics.

"I just wanted to give back to my community and come back and create jobs," he said.