Team

• The Donors

  • Suzanne Hillman

  • David Hillman

• Program Directors

• Advisory Board

The Donors

Suzanne Hillman

Suzanne Hillman is a Washington, DC native. She grew up in Northwest Washington and Montgomery County. After graduating from Walt Whitman High School, she attended American University, obtaining a B.S.B.A Degree in Accounting.

As a licensed Certified Public Accountant, she has been a partner in Hillman & Glorioso and its predecessor firms for almost 30 years. Hillman & Glorioso is a boutique public accounting firm, specializing in business and financial consulting and tax practice for small and medium sized businesses, priority is real estate and finance industries. Suzanne has great expertise in business organization, internal controls, structural finance, and forensic accounting. She is also an officer and director of Southern Management Corporation and several of its affiliates.

In her career, she has been a director of a federally chartered bank, serving as member of both the loan and the audit committees. For several years, she was a member of the Board of Trustees of American University (Washington, DC), where she was instrumental in developing the Kogod School of Business’ Vision and Mission Statements. She has been a member of the Board of The Washington Ballet, and has participated in many fund raising activities including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Suzanne resides in McLean, Virginia with her husband, David. A large part of her life is devoted to her family, which includes parents, adult siblings, adult children, grandchildren, and nieces and nephews.

David Hillman

David Hillman is the founder and CEO of Southern Management Corporation, the largest real estate management firm in the region. He was named “Innovator of the Year” in 2002 for his creativity in developing attractive and livable communities through the rental units he built from dilapidated Baltimore buildings. “Most of our buildings are 100 percent occupied, and most of our renters stay for five years compared to the industry standard of 18 months, notes Hillman. “ Whether an apartment rents for $500 or $2,500, I want it to be the best that it can be. My litmus test is to ask myself: ‘If I lived here, would I be embarrassed for someone to visit me?” This is Hillman’s motto. He wants to make life better for the people who live in his apartments and for them to have a sense of pride for the homes they live in even if they are renting. The 27,000 units he manages in the metropolitan region have brought him great financial success, and he wants to give back to the very people who might live in his apartments through programs like his newly created Hillman Entrepreneurs Program.

David grew up in Maryland and is devoted to giving back to the region and State that contributed to his success.  As a teenager, Mr. Hillman describes himself as an ordinary high school student, not college bound, without clear aspirations and with no real sense of who he was.

After graduating from high school, Mr. Hillman worked for a developer as a book keeper and he attended a non-accredited night school, Strayer College, where he took accounting courses.  He took the CPA exam and, at the time, was the youngest person to pass on the first attempt, which is an indication of an innate talent that seemed hidden in high school. His experiences with managing other peoples’ accounts helped him realize his strengths and he began purchasing and managing his own property. 

In recent years, David Hillman has been thinking about how to give some of his good fortune back to the community. He looks for bright young people with potential who, given proper support, can become successful, sometimes in spite of challenging backgrounds. His goal is for his scholarship recipients to have the opportunity to pursue a college education, become entrepreneurial thinkers and, like him, give back to their communities in Maryland. 

Program Directors

Karen Thornton, MBA
Director of Hillman Entrepreneurs Program
e-mail

With more than twenty years experience working as an educator and mentor in two industries, first music performance as an artist entrepreneur and teacher--and now by supporting young entrepreneurs--Karen Thornton provides guidance to entrepreneurs who are just starting down the road to finding their dreams. She was the founding program director of the award-winning Hinman Campus Entrepreneurship Opportunities (CEOs) Program from its launch in Fall of 2000 until December 2006. Here, she mentored undergraduate entrepreneurs in this unique living-learning environment. She and the faculty director provided the vision that has shaped the Hinman CEOs Program into a nationally recognized program.

Karen continues her mission to build nationally recognized entrepreneurship programs as Maryland’s program director for the newly launched Hillman Entrepreneurs Program. Her experience building programs and mentoring students has shifted to assist this new set of students achieve success and become tomorrow’s leaders.

Karen is setting up the program at Maryland and working with the program at PGCC to help with the transition of the first students who will transfer to Maryland in the Fall. She also manages the business development activities of MTECH Ventures. In addition, she oversees a cadre of educational programs and activities offered through the Clark School of Engineering designed to spur and support technology commercialization through education, networking and hands-on incubation.

Karen has professional experience in both human resources and negotiation; she lectures on ethics, marketing and other business topics. Karen is a frequent presenter at conferences and has co-authored several papers on entrepreneurship education. She has earned Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Florida State University, ARCM from the Royal College of Music, London, and an MBA from the University of Maryland. She taught at Jacksonville University (FL), and Towson University for a total of fifteen years before coming to the University of Maryland. She was a Fulbright Scholar, and studied and worked in London for nearly three years.

Lisa Rawlings, MBA
e-mail

Lisa Rawlings is the Program Director of the Hillman Entrepreneurs Program at Prince George’s Community College and works with Karen Thornton to build this new special program for undergraduate entrepreneurs that is a partnership between Prince George’s Community College and the University of Maryland. Rawlings is a Baltimore native who has worked in finance for over 15 years. Prior to accepting this new position, Ms. Rawlings worked at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs where she was did financial/policy analysis and research. At the Robert H. Smith School where she pursued a PhD degree, Ms. Rawlings taught both introductory and advanced finance courses. She was nominated for the 2001 Parents' Association Teaching Award. Prior to her return to academia, Ms. Rawlings was a financial manager for Procter & Gamble for eight years.

Ms. Rawlings received a BSE in Systems Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Michigan where she was a Consortium for the Graduate Study of Management fellow.

Advisory Board

• Karen Thornton, Hillman Entrepreneurs Program Director, University of Maryland
  
• Lisa Rawlings, Hillman Entrepreneurs Program Director, Prince George’s Community College
  
• Jacqueline Rogers, Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland
  
• John Rosicky, Dean of Behavioral, Social and Business Studies, Prince George's Community College
  
• Ken Ashworth, Executive Director, Development and Campaign Director, University of Maryland
  
• Brenda Mitchell, Development Director, Prince George’s Community College
  
• Cheryl Hillman, Representative of the Hillman Family