Education Foundation Gets a Full-time Managing Director

The first managing director of the Manassas City Schools Education Foundation will be welcomed this Thursday at 5 p.m., during a meet and greet to be held at Opera House Gourmet on Center Street.

Rita Colleran will be the first in the capacity to be paid for her work and plans to put all of her time and dedication into the job.

Colleran has taught business and psychology undergraduate and graduate classes in schools across the United States for several years, including the Manassas campus of Northern Virginia Community College. When she isn’t teaching, she acts as the vice-chair of the membership committee at the Hylton Center for Performing Arts.

She’s also had her own business, Colleran & Associates since 1988. However, she will lay this business to rest in order to do her best as the foundation’s managing director.

“I plan to continue to teach as long as NOVA will have me,” Colleran said. “Aside from that, I plant to devote all of my professional time to the education foundation, serving young children is an ideal of mine.”

Colleran’s work will include planning, administration, budgeting, grant writing, fundraising, corporate relationship development, marketing, public relations and school project development and management.

With an extensive background in education, she provides an in-depth prospective to serving the educational needs of Manassas City. She is trained in developmental and educational psychology.

As well as a trained educator, Colleran is the mother of two teenage girls, and shares an interest with parents with children in the school system.

“We have never before had an experienced professional dedicated to leading our foundation, and felt we were at a point where management required more time than the volunteer Board of Directors was able to commit,” said Lianne Best, vice president of the foundation. “We are extremely fortunate to have had the resources to fund the position and look forward to the growth that Rita will enable.”

Colleran came to the area a year ago and is married to a long-time resident of Prince William County. Through her husband’s friend and current president of the Fauquier County Chamber of Commerce, Joe Martin, she heard the foundation needed help.

 “My first order of business is learning the needs of the Manassas City public schools, and how the foundation can be of best service,” she said.

The foundation has been an active supporter of the Manassas school system since 1992. Its first great contribution to the schools came in 1993 in the form of a grant that enabled Metz Middle School to have a computer system with Internet for the Science Department.

 Members of the foundation seem positive that Colleran will be a great addition to the team.

 “I’m incredibly impressed with her energy and drive and how eager she is to assist the foundation and the students and teachers of the Manassas City school system,” said Ian Lovejoy, the foundation’s upcoming president.

 “We are all very excited to have Rita Colleran join us as managing director,” Best said. “She brings a 35 plus-year career in non-profit management and fundraising, as well as a passion for and education in childhood psychology and education. She also has remarkable energy and determination—hold onto your hats, Manassas!”