Scott Ambush
Like many who find a full-fledged career in music, Scott Ambush grew up surrounded by other musicians. His mother sang in a traveling gospel group, and he remembers her love of artists such as Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin. When he was 12 years old, he started playing drums in his first rock band. “Music was always in the house,” he says.
Not long afterward, he shifted to playing bass and had some of his first experiences playing local gigs. His Uncle Harry encouraged an interest in R&B and finally his cousin, a pianist, turned him on to jazz. Jazz is what stuck.
Ambush also early on shifted focus from a college degree in psychology to pursuing music full-time. Since then, he hasn’t looked back. He spent years in the DC music scene building connections, which led to an eventual opportunity to audition with jazz fusion supergroup Spyro Gyra. He’s been Spyro Gyra’s bass player since 1992, and the band celebrated its 50th anniversary tour in 2024.
Highlights, for Ambush, have included being part of 5 Grammy nominations, traveling to over 70 countries, and getting to meet and perform with legends and some of his own favorite artists such as Herbie Hancock. Ambush continues to tour, play and record, but he’s stayed local: “Frederick is a great place to come home to,” he says. A complementary passion Ambush pursues is building bass instruments as a luthier – he says he’s always had an interest in DIY. He looks forward to giving this more of his time as he eventually moves out of full-time performance – another chapter in an inspiring career.
Kavonte Duckett
Kavonte Duckett developed a personal commitment to community service from a very young age. His great-grandparents, he says, taught him the value of family and community and he knew he wanted to give back to Frederick specifically, as a Frederick native. At Tuscarora High School, he joined the young men’s leadership organization the Necktie Club and he had the opportunity to serve as the Vice President and later the President of the Student Government at FCC. He remembers developing a good relationship with the board of directors and serving on FCC’s Presidential Search Committee.
His experiences in Student Government gave him the confidence to set his sights higher – at Frederick’s County Council. After an initial unsuccessful run in 2018 – in which he “learned a lot,” he says – he was elected in 2022 as Frederick’s first County Councilor of color and also one of its youngest. At the same time, he was also serving as the Shelter Director for Beyond Shelter Frederick (formerly Frederick’s Religious Coalition for Emergency Human Needs), a position he held for four years and continued as an assistant at the Rollins Life Celebration Center. Duckett is currently finishing his mortuary degree and plans to continue serving the community through the Life Celebration Center, where he is now Director of Operations.
Some of his other community engagements include membership at the Elks Lodge, serving as a board member for AARCH, as well as for the historical African American Fairview Cemetery. Government, though, he says, was always what he’d held as an aspiration: “Representation is important and if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” He hopes to continue shaping the conversation and building a better world for his five-year-old son.
Theresa Williams-Harrison
Theresa Williams-Harrison has established herself as an entrepreneur, speaker, mentor, Amazon #1 Best Selling author and community servant. Theresa is the Founder and President of GEORGE STREET Services, Inc. which is a leading cyber security company that provides digital services, software engineering, IT and management services to the federal government and commercial companies.
Prior to GEORGE STREET, from 1996 – 2008, Theresa was co-owner and president of Athenyx, LLC, #7 on the Greater Washington Technology Fast50 list and acquired in 2008.
As an advocate and mentor to minority and women owned businesses, Theresa is most excited about assisting with the development of strategies to successfully launch their companies, products and services while improving operations’ efficiency.
A motivational speaker, author, mentor and active community servant such as:
Just A Kind Note, International, Founder, Hood College, Board of Trustees, Truist Bank, Advisory Board, (Western Maryland), Woman to Woman Mentoring, Board Member and Frederick County Alumnae Chapter, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Theresa’s debut book, “BUSINESS SUCCESS SECRETS,” is an anthology of the entrepreneurial journeys of 34 authors whose stories reveal the successes, failures and secrets to help any entrepreneur on the journey to launching, building and growing a business is Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Amazon bestseller.
Theresa’s second book, Yes, You ARE Able, is an amazon bestseller. She brings the reader on a journey to reach their highest peaks and summits, achieving all their biggest goals and dreams.
Earl Robbins
When Earl Robbins and his wife were looking at moving to Frederick in 1976, they asked some friends from DC and Baltimore about the area and if they recommended it. The friends warned against Frederick-it wasn't known for being welcoming to people of color, they said-but the Robbinses took the leap anyway. Decades later, Robbins has become a pillar of the community and has been a key player in multiple efforts toward positive change.
In addition to building a career with manufacturer Alcoa, Inc., where he retired as the Director of State and Local Government Affairs, he also became active in community organizing efforts. Along with fellow activists such as William O. (Bill) Lee, Warren Dorsey and Chris Tyree, Robbins formed the Political Umbrella Group of Frederick County (PUG) in the late 1980s as “a voice for the Black community in politics.” An involved civic leader, Robbins was appointed to and served as president of the Board of Education, Frederick’s United Way, the Chamber of Commerce and the Hood College Board of Associates.
Much of his other work has centered around building the next generation. With his fraternity, the Frederick Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, he helped found the Necktie Club at Frederick High School in 1995, which helps primarily young Black men cultivate leadership skills and dress for success (it has since spread to other county high schools). He also was a founding board member of education organization Eliminating Achievement Gaps (EAG).
Maybe the best symbol of his success in community building, though, has been the program he and Kappa Alpha Psi developed to recognize Black honor roll students. “Senior Scholars,” as they call them, are awarded a kente cloth to wear during graduation. “We had to hand the program off to another organization,” Robbins says. “The fraternity couldn’t afford it anymore – there were too many kente cloths to buy.”
Dr. Denise Rollins
Dr. Denise Rollins credits her sense of purpose in the community to family members who raised her with an attitude toward service. A Frederick native, her father’s grandfather was Frederick’s first Black undertaker, a particularly amazing fact considering that Rollins has found her calling helping the Frederick community heal during times of loss and grief.
She gravitated toward mission work early on, starting her first nonprofit for African American cultural enrichment at the age of 22 and then went on to spend 23 years as an accountant in the corporate world. After her mother, aunt and husband all passed within a short period of time, she decided to rebuild her life during the process of healing and serve others who were experiencing deep loss, as well.
While earning a thanatology Master’s degree at Hood College in 2011, she connected with Gary Rollins, director of the Gary L. Rollins Funeral Home. Their shared sense of purpose blossomed into a second marriage for both of them (both had lost previous spouses), and Denise’s nonprofit, Whole Heart Grief and Life Resource Center, found a new home at what became the Rollins Life Celebration Center. Now the two partner to care for the needs of clients in a forward-thinking and holistic way, offering support that goes beyond the funeral service.
In the wider community, Rollins has spearheaded efforts as a board member of the Ausherman Family Foundation to develop a grant program for Black-led nonprofits and she also serves on the board of Frederick Health Hospital. “My father died at this hospital, which didn’t allow Black patients when he was born,” she says, reflecting on Frederick’s changes. “I want to be a part of further progress and be at the table to make a difference.”
Gayon Sampson
Gayon Sampson first sparked an interest in government while at South Frederick Elementary School, learning about American history. He says he noticed how quickly things were able to shift for African Americans with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act by the Lyndon Johnson administration. He saw how this legislation “changed the way the country was able to help others,” he says, and how government was a “key forum for progress.” This instilled an early desire to pursue a governmental career.
Sampson has been very successful in that pursuit, holding positions as a policy associate with the Greater Baltimore Committee, a community outreach advisor at Johns Hopkins University’s Office of Government and Community Affairs and also working on Capitol Hill and with the Maryland General Assembly. Finally, however, Sampson has returned to serve the community he grew up in – and where he is an 8th generation native. He has been the Senior Advisor to the Mayor of the City of Frederick since 2018.
Sampson has also received a number of awards and distinctions, including “Towson University Emerging Student Leader” (where he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science), “Black Frederick Rising Star,” the “NAACP Youth Award of Excellence” and the “Eliminating the Achievement Gap Man of Distinction Award.” He holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy.
Today, he takes pride in holding a position of leadership in the same City Hall that his grandfather was once barred from entering. “Government creates space for people to exist, to function, and to be who they want to be,” he says.
Dr. Renee Thomas-Spencer
Looking back on her career, Dr. Renee Thomas-Spencer feels that it’s been marked by a sense of “blessing” and full-circle moments. Thomas-Spencer has known since she was eight years old, she says, that she wanted to be a doctor – she has always had “a spirit of empathy and compassion” – and as she made those dreams a reality, she felt the natural call to women’s health. Thomas-Spencer feels lucky to have established her gynecology practice in her hometown – most people, she says, “tend to stay where they train.” She’s had the opportunity to care for and deliver babies for friends and family.
Thomas-Spencer also felt blessed that she was able to earn her medical degree from Howard University, where she says she felt supported by like-minded community at a historically Black university. During her junior year, she served as the president of the medical school student body; she loved her experience so much that she chose another historically Black university, Morehouse in Atlanta, to complete her doctor’s residency. Following that, she was able to connect with a friend at Frederick’s Capital Women’s Care practice (then Frederick OBGYN) and found out that they were hiring. She has been with the practice since 2003 and became a managing partner in 2008.
In the community, she serves as a board member for Blessings in a Backpack, is a chartering member of the Western Maryland chapter of Jack and Jill of America and is on the board of trustees at her daughter’s school, Holton Arms. She reflects on how far she’s come from a childhood where her single mother had to work two jobs and says her goal is to ensure that her own daughter appreciates “just how blessed they are.”