About

Mary S. Peake Fellowship


The Mary S. Peake Fellowship provides a one-year program for recent college graduates, returning veterans, and military spouses who develop next generation leadership skills as they coach small businesses to increase revenue and cybersecurity in an AI and big data-driven economy.

The Fellowship was developed by Dean Emeritus John McArthur of the Harvard Business School, Grameen America CEO Andrea Jung, Lieutenant General Darrell K. Williams (ret.), and other leaders from industry, education, and public service. Through a competitive application process, the Fellowship selects outstanding candidates from throughout the United States.

Each Peake Fellow trains small & local businesses through the Peake Fellows Service as part of an intensive 12-month experience in partnership with ecosystem leads (industry supply chains, higher ed centers, chambers of commerce, and other business associations). The Fellowship supports ecosystem leads to launch joint innovation projects as Community Connection Campaigns to achieve shared objectives such as cybersecurity improvement, business continuity planning, or expansion of education and community health resources.

Peake’s Applied Learning & Teaching methodology for Fellows and the businesses they serve expands the impact of MIT & Harvard’s Open edX system. To date, over 55 million learners have benefited from Open edX’s free software.

The goal of the Fellowship and Peake’s ecosystem partners is to jointly mobilize small businesses nationwide to upskill and measure their cybersecure growth across four business tracks: cybersecurity, outreach & engagement, ecommerce, and cloud operations.

  • Individual businesses growing with the help of a Peake Fellow here.
  • A particular region as a role model for the country here.

The Peake Fellowship, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), collaborates with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), other regional colleges and universities, other national colleges and universities, community colleges, vocational-technical schools, and outplacement centers for all federal uniformed service branches.

Stage at national business forum 

National Upskilling of Small & Local Businesses: longtime Peake Fellowship Methodologies Lead – Chiderah Okoye (left) & Peake Fellowship Engineering Lead – Tom Fellows (right) facilitating a national business forum with St. Louis Chamber CEO/incoming Chair of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (middle left) and the admiral who leads U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) supply chain partnerships with the private sector (middle right).
Photo source: U.S. Department of Defense/National Defense Transportation Association