STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Dr. Janet Leslie, founder and CEO of the Leslie-Carter Group LLC and Gift of Experience LLC, is dedicated to developing the next generation of leaders.
Born and reared in Brooklyn’s Ocean-Hill Brownsville during the height of the civil rights struggle, Leslie is a native New Yorker. When Leslie began her schooling in the early 1960s, schools in New York were still segregated, and Ocean-Hill Brownsville was a largely Puerto Rican and Black neighborhood at the time.
Leslie, the daughter of two immigrants from the Caribbean, started going to school at PS 137, a segregated elementary school located next door to the Leslie home. Leslie and countless other pupils in Ocean-Hill Brownsville lost their childhoods when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 strengthened voting rights, forbade segregation in public places, including schools, and barred discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Since the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which gave African Americans citizenship and equal rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most radical piece of civil rights legislation.
Leslie changed elementary schools after finishing the second grade in 1964 in order to receive a better education. She started going to the newly integrated PS 203 in September of that year, traveling more than an hour and a half each way by bus. Leslie was one of three students of color in the entire school and the only person of color in her grade for the remainder of her primary school career. While more than half of the students in New York City were Black or Puerto Rican, as of 1967, fewer than 8 percent of school employees were people of color.
Over the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, permanently altering my childhood. I recall that in a class full of white students, I never received any academic engagement and the teacher never called on me. Leslie remembers that in order to prevent objects from being hurled at them, the children of color would have to dash directly from the school bus into the school. I used to cry every day when I got home and told my parents that I didn’t want to return, but I gradually got over it and began using education as a positive tool.
As Leslie pursued her studies, she found that she was not only passionate about studying but also exceptionally skilled at it. She started to set herself apart by embracing her intelligence and never stopping learning new things. Leslie became an authority on specialized areas by spending her leisure time researching new subjects throughout elementary and middle school. In the seventh grade, she overcame all obstacles to being chosen class president, assuming her first leadership position and giving her a genuine chance to show off her skills to her peers. Leslie was the first member of her family to earn a college degree, and she continued to do well throughout middle and high school before graduating from Brooklyn College with a bachelor of arts degree in sociology.
Leslie started working at Kingsborough Community College (KCC) as an operations manager after graduating from Brooklyn College in 1986. She advanced swiftly through the ranks at KCC, becoming the director of the Office of Academic Scheduling & eSIMs Help Center and eventually a senior administrator. Leslie was motivated to begin her master’s degree in higher education administration while she was employed full-time at KCC. She finished it in 1999 at Baruch College.
In 2003, Leslie started teaching at KCC as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Human Services, where she mentored and taught students in the education program. Her passion for learning swiftly developed into a passion for instructing and mentoring students. Leslie chose to pursue her doctorate in higher education after discovering her love for mentoring while working as a teacher. Her dissertation, Topologies of an Effective Mentoring Model: At the Intersection of Community Colleges, Underrepresented Students, and Completion, was completed in 2012 when she was pursuing her doctorate in management at the University of Maryland University College.
Leslie spent a another 20 years as a teacher at KCC, finishing her last session in 2023. Leslie opened up yet another avenue for herself as a teacher by concentrating on mentoring non-traditional students of color throughout her tenure as an adjunct assistant professor.
Leslie recalls thinking, “Gosh, I wish I had the gift of someone else’s experience,” while attending the University of Maryland for graduate school. “I had no one to look up to academically,” she says. That’s what inspired me to launch my own company and provide others with the direction I lacked. That third-grade child who had to learn to learn has always been my inspiration.
Leslie founded Gift of Experience LLC, a small company, in 2019 with the goals of providing mentorship services, locating post-secondary educational options, and connecting PhD and graduate students with funding and academic resources. Leslie’s initial objective was to work mostly with college students, giving them the direction they needed to be successful there. Since then, Gift of Experience has expanded rapidly, and she now teaches at numerous locations like A Chance in Life and the New York City Business Solutions Center on Staten Island, working with students ranging from high school students to people launching their own enterprises. In addition, Leslie teaches the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!), a 16-week after-school program run by the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce that turns children into entrepreneurs.
In 2021, Leslie and her sons, Omar Gyasi Carter and Ibrahim Sharif Carter, founded the Leslie-Carter Group LLC with the personal goal of paving the way for future generations to become wealthy. A family-run company called the Leslie-Carter Group encourages buying real estate as a legacy investment. Before relocating to Staten Island and buying her home in West Brighton in 1999, Leslie bought her first home in Jamaica, Queens, in 1986. She has so consistently urged her local family to buy real estate.
Leslie will receive a Louis R. Miller Business Leadership Award in the Established Businessperson category in recognition of her achievements. The Staten Island Chamber of Commerce and the Staten Island Advance offer the prizes in remembrance of Louis R. Miller, a West Brighton citizen and businessman who was also a community leader.
Leslie is quite involved in the Staten Island community, in addition to giving young people there chances. She is currently a member of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – Staten Island, the National Council of Negro Women – Staten Island, the Parliamentarians of Metro New York and Greater New York, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, and the National Council for the Social Studies. She is also a member of the Seamen’s Society for Children and Families, the Staten Island Museum, the Sundog Theatre, and the Lambda Kappa Mu Sorority, Inc. Lambda Chapter Board of Directors.
Council Member Kamillah M. Hanks also awarded Leslie with the Black Excellence in Business Award (2024). Additionally, she was given the Thomasina Williams Community Service Award by the Harriet Tubman Purple Hat Society in 2022 and a Community Award Citation by Project Caribbean in 2023.
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