Title:Marriott Foundation supports endowed professorship for Georgetown’s new Thrive Center

The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation has made an investment in the future of children and families in the DC area and beyond with a $2 million gift to endow a professorship at Georgetown’s new Thrive Center for Children, Families, and Communities, a multidisciplinary academic center focusing on child and family mental health, disabilities, health equity, and digital health.

“The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation has demonstrated a deep and sustained commitment to addressing the ongoing mental health crisis facing children and families in the DC region and nationally,” says Matthew Biel, M.D., MSc, the Marriott Chair of Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and chief of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. “They have provided extremely generous and impactful support to a number of critical initiatives spanning research, clinical initiatives, and training, and now the Marriott Foundation is providing critical funds for our center’s leadership so that we can expand the scale of our work.”

‘Creativity and out-of-box thinking’

“The Marriott Foundation’s investment in the launch of the Thrive Center demonstrates our commitment to the next level of creativity and out-of-the box thinking required to address our nation’s mental health crisis,” says Mieka F. Wick, CEO of The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation.

“We see its planned activities in community engagement, research, innovation, advocacy, and workforce training as building our collective knowledge around the root causes driving the national mental health crisis and racial and other disparities,” adds Wick. “The Thrive Center will engage the critical expertise of families and cross-sector partnerships to develop and spread clinical and community-based solutions that more effectively promote mental wellness, prevent crises from happening, and address them when they do.”

Read more about the Thrive Center for Children, Families, and Communities >