The founding team.

For more than 30 years, Andrew Backman has led teams, solved complex operational challenges, and helped organizations grow. He is Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer of Mass Pavement Reclamation, Inc. and Managing Director of JGB Recycled Aggregate Materials and Hanabury Built Pavements, where his work spans operations, strategy, organizational development, and executive leadership.

Along the way his attention shifted toward a question that now guides his professional and academic work: how do we help people become better versions of themselves and, in doing so, create better teams, organizations, and communities? He is pursuing an Executive Doctor of Business Administration at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, with research interests in neuroscience-informed leadership, emotional intelligence, decision-making, and organizational behavior.

He founded BrainAligned Leadership Institute to connect scholarly research with practical human development. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Fishing for the Mission 22, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing veteran suicide by supporting veterans and their families.

Andrew served on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1993 to 2000 and in the Massachusetts Air National Guard from 2000 to 2003, and has been a Massachusetts-certified paramedic since 2012. He is a LEADx Certified EQ Facilitator & Coach.

Richard Melloni Jr., PhD, is a Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at Northeastern University in Boston, where he has maintained a dual focus on neuroscience teaching and research for more than 25 years. Before Northeastern, he was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatric Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, where he received his doctorate in the Biomedical Sciences.

For more than 30 years his research has investigated the neurobiological underpinnings of aggressive behavior and anxiety, exploring both basic and clinical dimensions, in more than 70 peer-reviewed articles. His work has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Devereux Foundation, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Repligen, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. At Northeastern he has served as Director of the Behavioral Neuroscience Program, Chair of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and Chair of the College of Science’s Full Professor Promotion Committee.

A dedicated community leader, he founded the Dick Melloni Youth Foundation in 1996 to enhance the education, health, and welfare of Wareham youth, and was named Wareham Man of the Year by the New Bedford Standard-Times in 2004. For more than three years he has served Fishing for the Mission 22, first as a volunteer and now on its Board of Directors, helping create and administer programs focused on suicide prevention, mental health, and wellness for veterans and first responders.