Mr. Donnelly was raised on the campus of a boarding, preparatory school in the Cleveland area. He is the son of an English teacher and a Librarian, each of whom provided crucial assistance in the founding of Eukarya. Dan has been married to Donna for 20 years and is the father of Nolan and Owen; who are both ECA alum. He earned a B.A. from Oberlin College majoring in History and a Master’s of Social Work from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Dan has worked with children and adolescents since he was a teenager, first as a day camp counselor then later as a child psychiatric specialist at Children’s National Medical Center in DC. After earning his Master’s degree, he served as a child and family therapist at the National Family Resiliency Center in Columbia, MD. He and Donna moved to Winchester in order to open a Sylvan Learning Center franchise in 2000 where he served as a director for nearly eight years. He and a small group of parents and staff members started Eukarya in the spring of 2010. The school started with 8 students in the fall of that year. He has been involved in local churches serving mostly in children’s ministry, as a small groups co-director with Donna and more recently as a licensed pastor in the Brethren Church (Ashland, OH).