Advisory Board
The purpose of the ADVISORY BOARD is to engage a more diverse group of (up to 30) people who are prepared to serve the school in their particular area of expertise or experience. The advisory board meets annually and its members are available to the school and the board for consultation and participation in projects or committees. In some cases, the person may represent an organization that is closely aligned with the school’s vision; in others, he or she may simply be an individual who is willing to bring some much-needed resources to bear on challenges that the school faces.
Pete Alwinson
Pete Alwinson has been involved in developing men for over forty years, helping guys come to understand who they are as God’s sons and how the Father is willing to invest himself in developing them every day of their lives so that they can become the men he always intended them to be and who they deeply desire to be: real men! His passion is to leave no man left behind on the battlefield of life and to help men flourish, for as men flourish spiritually so do women, children, churches, and culture! He desires to show how Grace builds guys into men and men into mentors.
A Californian, Pete founded a PCA church in Orlando, Florida, where he served for twenty-six years as senior pastor. He has served churches in California, Illinois, Connecticut, and Florida. He is a graduate of Biola College, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (MDiv) and Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando (DMin). Pete was one of the first speakers on the Man in the Mirror faculty and now is founder/speaker of FORGE, City Wide Ministry to Men in Orlando, Florida (ForgeTruth.com). Pete has taught classes at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, and Knox Seminary. His first book is Like Father, Like Son: How Knowing God As Father Changes Men published by New Growth Press. Pete is on the board of Key Life Network and has participated in the Friday radio broadcast with Steve Brown for many years.
Family is Pete’s claim to fame: married to Caron for over forty years together they have three children and five grandchildren. Pete’s hobbies are working out, hiking 14er’s in Colorado, hunting, and scalloping with family.
Larry Belcher
Larry Belcher served on The Geneva School Board of Governors for two years before moving to Indiana in 2011 where he currently serves as dean of the school of business and professor of finance at the University of Indianapolis, Indiana, a private institution of higher education affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Prior to that, he was dean and program director of the business program at Taylor University, a private non-denominational Christian university in Upland, Indiana, and director of the George Investments Institute at Stetson University in Deland, Florida.
Dr. Belcher earned a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Hanover College in 1978, an MS in Economics from Auburn University in 1979, and a PhD (economics) from Indiana University in 1987, where he was a graduate school fellow.
Dr. Belcher and his wife, Susan, are passionate about Christian classical education and the Reformed Christian tradition. They served as part of the original group of parents involved in the start-up of Geneva Academy in DeLand before moving their children to The Geneva School for four years. They have two sons: Cameron and Landon. Larry has been involved in the Presbyterian Church in America as a ruling elder in three different congregations.
Phillip Donnelly
Phillip Donnelly joined The Geneva School Advisory Board in 2013. He currently serves as the director for the Great Texts Program at Baylor University. He is a professor of literature in the honors college and teaches in both the Great Texts Program and the English department. Prior to Baylor, he taught at the University of Ottawa and at Texas Tech University.
Dr. Donnelly is the author of The Lost Seeds of Learning: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric as Life-Giving Arts (Classical Academic Press) and Milton’s Scriptural Reasoning: Narrative and Protestant Toleration (Cambridge University Press). In addition to teaching at the university level for over twenty years, he has been active for over a decade in faculty development for K–12 classical educators. He is a member of the National Board for the Alcuin Fellowship and serves as the director for the Texas chapter of the Alcuin Fellowship.
Kim Lopdrup
Kim Lopdrup retired from Red Lobster in August 2021 after leading the brand for fourteen years as president or CEO. He led three turnarounds, each under a different owner. Red Lobster is the world’s largest seafood restaurant company and was named to Forbes magazine’s most recent list of America’s Best Large Employers.
Mr. Lopdrup previously served as president of the Specialty Restaurant Group and New Business for Darden Restaurants, leading their Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Eddie V’s, Bahama Breeze, and Yard House brands as well as Darden’s international division and consumer packaged goods business. Prior to that, he led Red Lobster as president for seven years.
Before joining Red Lobster, Mr. Lopdrup served as executive vice president and chief operating officer, North America, for Burger King Corporation. Earlier, he spent sixteen years with Allied Domecq Quick Service Restaurants (since renamed Dunkin’ Brands), the franchisor of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. He began his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble, working on Folgers and High Point coffees and Citrus Hill orange juice.
Mr. Lopdrup earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the College of William and Mary in 1980 and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1984. He is married and has four children, all of whom graduated from The Geneva School.
Tim Manor
Tim Manor is an experienced commercial litigator and corporate attorney who has represented clients in commercial and corporate matters ranging from simple contract disagreements to complex multiparty litigation in several venues. He has varied and extensive experience in a full-range of complex international, national, and local cases. For several years, Mr. Manor has represented The Coca-Cola Company, The Travelers Insurance Company, and CNL Financial Group, Inc.
Mr. Manor is a graduate of Brown University (cum laude, 1971) and Vanderbilt University School of Law (1974). He is a member of The Florida Bar and a shareholder emeritus with the Lowndes law firm in Orlando. He is a former board member of The Geneva School.
Eric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas is the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Called a “biography of uncommon power,” Bonhoeffer appeared on numerous 2010 “Best of the Year,” sold more than 600,000 copies, and has been translated into fifteen languages.
In a decidedly eclectic career, Mr. Metaxas has written for VeggieTales, Chuck Colson, and the New York Times, three things not ordinarily found in the same sentence. He is a best-selling author whose biographies, children’s books, and works of popular apologetics have been translated into many languages.
Mr. Metaxas was the keynote speaker at the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, an event attended by the president and First Lady, the vice president, members of Congress, and other US and world leaders. That speech and his essay on the experience, were put into a book, No Pressure, Mr. President: The Power of True Belief in a Time of Crisis.
Along with his colleague John Stonestreet, Mr. Metaxas is the voice of BreakPoint, a radio commentary that is broadcast on 1,400 radio outlets with an audience of eight million.
In 2011, Mr. Metaxas was the seventeenth recipient of the Canterbury Medal awarded by the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from Hillsdale College, Liberty University, and Sewanee: The University of the South.
Mr. Metaxas’s most recent books are Seven Men: And the Secret of their Greatness (2013), Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life (2014), and Seven Women: And the Secret of their Greatness (2015). He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.
John Rivers
John Rivers joined The Geneva School board of governors in 2009 and serves on the development committee. Mr. Rivers’ experience includes twenty years in corporate healthcare that culminated as the president of CuraScript Specialty Distribution, a $1.4 billion pharmaceutical distribution operation. Retiring in 2007, Mr. Rivers launched The Rivers Consulting Group, which engaged in strategic consulting with a range of large, mid-cap, and emerging companies in healthcare commerce before leveraging his experience to create his new company, 4R Restaurant Group, where Mr. Rivers serves as chef and CEO. 4R Restaurant Group currently operates eleven 4 Rivers Smokehouse locations, six Sweet Shop bakeries throughout Florida, and the southern inspired restaurant concept, The COOP, in Winter Park, Florida. Mr. Rivers has also published his first book, The Southern Cowboy Cookbook.
Mr. Rivers is a graduate of the Florida State University School of Business and currently resides in Winter Park with his wife Monica and two children, Jared (TGS Class of 2013, Samford University) and Cameron (TGS Class of 2016). The Rivers are members at Summit Church in Orlando.
Scott Swain
Scott Swain is president and James Woodrow Hassell Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He has served on the RTS faculty since 2006, having previously taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
Dr. Swain’s main research interests include the doctrine of God, theological interpretation of scripture, and modern Protestant theology, and he has published a number of books and essays on these topics. With Dr. Michael Allen, he serves as general editor of two series: Zondervan Academic’s New Studies in Dogmatics and T & T Clark’s International Theological Commentary.
He and his wife, Leigh, (who teaches second grade at The Geneva School) have four children: Carly, Sophie, Josiah (TGS Class of ‘23), and Micah (TGS Class of ‘25). Dr. Swain is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, and the Swain family are members of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Orlando.
Andrzej Turkanik
Andrzej Turkanik completed degrees in music, art, and theology before earning his PhD from Cambridge University. A native of Poland, born and raised during the Communist regime, he studied music and art in Poland, and theology in Germany and England. He and his wife Malgosia and their children live in Salzburg, Austria, where he serves as the executive director for the Quo Vadis Institute, an organization focused on developing ideas and knowledge to produce flourishing societies in Europe.
The Turkanik family has deeply-rooted connections with The Geneva School, not least through their daughter Stefania, who lived in Winter Park and attended TGS in her sophomore year, an experience which convinced them of the compelling value of being part of this community of faith and learning.
Jim Wert
Jim Wert is the managing partner of Wert and Associates, a consultancy focused on building strategic clarity and organizational health for a wide array of corporate and nonprofit clients. He works closely with client leadership teams and governance boards through projects that range from strategic planning, to organization design and capacity building, to leadership development. He has also served over one hundred nonprofit clients, ranging from single-site agencies to national and international networks.
Mr. Wert has more than twenty years of experience as a strategic consultant, initially as a senior engagement manager with McKinsey & Company, and from 2000–2013 leading the strategy practice at Triaxia Partners, an Atlanta-based firm that specializes in organizational and team development. With both firms, he worked extensively on client engagements across North America, Europe and Asia.
Between his consulting tenures with McKinsey and Triaxia, Mr. Wert spent seven years in national and multinational corporate environments. He served as the chief financial officer at National Service Industries’ Atlantic Envelope Division, directing strategic planning, performance management, sourcing and merger and acquisitions efforts. Prior to NSI, he served as the vice president of marketing for Mead Coated Board, where he led market assessment, customer service, logistics, and product development teams.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of North Carolina, with majors in political science and German, Mr. Wert earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar.
Mr. Wert and his family have been Atlantans since 1980, making them practically natives. He is an elder and active leader in the Presbyterian Church in America, and a past moderator of the Metro Atlanta Presbytery. He has also served on several non-profit boards ranging from education to the arts, and church planting to international student ministries.
