Biography
Randy Proto has over 30 years experience in career education, and has played a direct integral operational role in various colleges and schools which under his tenure have educated over 50,000 students and which today have grown to educate over 50,000 students annually.
He is an Eagle Member of FAPSCPAC, which is focused on ensuring access, affordability and quality in career education through legislative advocacy .
He is a member of the Grassroots Committee of the Career College Association. The Career College Association (CCA) is a voluntary membership organization of accredited, private, postsecondary schools, institutes, colleges and universities that provide career-specific educational programs. CCA has over 1,400 members that educate and support almost two million students each year for employment in over 200 occupational fields. These schools and colleges graduate approximately one-half of the technically trained workers who enter the U.S. workforce each year and also provide retraining for displaced workers and skills-upgrading for a wide variety of public and private employers.
He is a Strategic Partner in American Dog Rescue, a non-profit organization whose goal is “No Healthy Dog without a Home”.
He served as a Senior partner in EdExperts, a full service marketing strategic partner offering a CMO-to-Go solution for career colleges, from its founding through 2010.
He sat on the Board of ATI Enterprises, Inc which owns and operates career schools primarily offering non-degree programs in trade and allied health occupations.
Mr. Proto began his association with career education as a computer programming student at Computer Processing Institute (CPI) in Connecticut. After graduating from CPI in 1978, he worked there for eight years from 1978 to 1986 as an adjunct instructor, instructor, and Department Chair at its southern Connecticut location and Director of Education, Director of Admissions, Director of Campus Operations, and Campus President at its New Jersey location.
In 1986, he founded the Rhodes Group with a group of equity partners and acquired Suburban Technical School in New York. Suburban Tech has been in operation since the 1970s. As President and CEO of that group for eight years from 1986 to 1994, he developed and managed a team which grew it to 11 campuses employing over 500 individuals, in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California, with non-degree offerings in allied health, business, information technology, cosmetology and culinary arts. Among its schools was Dover Business College, which became part of the group in 1991 and has been in operation since the 1950s.
In November, 1994, he joined Whitman Education Group, a publicly traded education company located in eight states with a total enrollment of 675 students, as its President and Chief Operating Officer. Over eight years from 1994 through 2002, he developed and managed a team which grew it to a total of 23 campuses in 13 states with an enrollment of approximately 9,000 students, and employing over 1,000 individuals. It was acquired by Career Education Corporation in July, 2003. At Whitman, he oversaw the operation of both degree (through the Doctoral Level) and non-degree institutions, both regionally and nationally accredited, with numerous programmatic accreditations. They offered a combination of allied health, business, information technology and engineering programs.
From 1996 through 2007, Mr. Proto was also involved with the founding schools of American Institute as an investor and board member of Fox Institute in Connecticut and New Jersey, and, from 2005, as President of the School of Health Careers in Florida. Fox Institute has been in continuous operation since 1924, and offers non-degree programs predominately in allied health occupations. Those schools were acquired in December 2007 by the then newly formed American Institutes Holdings, LLC.From 2007 to late 2012 he was CEO of American Institutes Holdings, LLC a group with locations in Florida, New Jersey, and Connecticut. American Institutes is focused primarily on the delivery of degree and non-degree allied health related programs, both residentially and on a distance basis.
Mr. Proto is also an avid martial artist, black belt and co-founder of International Haganah Federation, LLC an organization which promotes an Israeli based self defense style which combines various Israeli and other arts in a way that makes for effective self defense and fitness and conditioning training “From Housewives to Homeland Security℠”. It is offered by a variety of martial arts schools and law enforcement and military organizations nationwide.
Mr. Proto’s is also focused on causes directed at assisting military veterans, and at improving children’s welfare and opportunities, and at animal welfare particularly dogs.
Mr. Proto lives with his wife, a former elementary school teacher and author, and their son.
[...] Randy Proto wrote an article for The Huffington Post in which he discusses a new regulation proposed by the [...]
[...] Sun Sentinel today ran an op-ed by president and CEO of American Institute, Randy Proto, that stressed the importance of addressing student debt in all sectors of higher education. Proto [...]