Skip to content

FOUNDER

Henry Sinclair Sherrill, Founder

Sinclair Sherrill is the founder of Boon. He is a seasoned non-profit leader and consultant with over thirty years of grant making, fundraising, and board governance experience.

Mr. Sherrill has a family association with structured language reading instruction. His mother, Patty, was an Orton-Gillingham Fellow, before there was such a designation, and Slingerland Institute of Literacy trained teacher who dedicated herself to helping dyslexic students and all learners become effective readers. In the late 60’s and 70’s she worked entirely on her own to introduce structured language reading instruction methods into public schools.

Mr. Sherrill has been a consultant in the non-profit sector, assisting numerous organizations with their governance, fundraising, and external relations objectives. These include: Sheltering Arms, (N.Y.C.); Volunteers of America, (N.Y.C.); the Center for Retinal Research at Columbia University, (NYC); Cambridge College (MA); the Angel Fund of Boston, which supports research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the Massachusetts General Hospital, MA; Ecole Blingue of Boston, MA; and the Independent Education Consultants of America Foundation,(VA)

For decades, Mr. Sherrill has been a director and grant maker at a family foundation where he has collaborated with other board members to make grants to education, literacy, learning disabilities, medical research, land conservation, the Episcopal Church, mental health, hospitals, libraries, and non-profits that provide for the disadvantaged.

Mr. Sherrill worked at Ralph Nader’s Center for Automobile Safety in Washington, D.C., and the Cheswick Center in Boston. He was director of development and planned giving at Fay School, the internationally known independent school, and directed fundraising at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Blood Research, and Mystic Seaport Museum.
He was a board member at the Partnership for Children, a special philanthropic board for the American Academy of Pediatrics; Landmark College; USS Constitution Museum; Navigator Foundation; Sherrill House; American Friends of The Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute; the International Dyslexia Association; Literate Nation; and Dyslexiaville.

In 2011, Mr. Sherrill organized a preliminary philanthropic research project with J. Sebastian Scripps and Jeffrey W. Earls, which led to establishing Boon in 2016. Their analysis began in the learning differences field and expanded to include general education, pre-school and elementary school education, policy, legislation, public funding for education, the science of reading and all forms of reading instruction, and professional development opportunities for teachers.

Mr Sherrill is an honorary member of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He received his BA at Harvard University, and a juris doctorate from the University of Puget Sound/Seattle University School of Law.