By DePaul Healthy Trailblazer Journal 8B reporters | When Dr. Keith Leaphart was growing up in the West Oak Lane section of Philadelphia, he wanted to make his neighborhood a better place and create more opportunities for Black youth like himself.
He lived in a single-parent home with his mother and his sister. “We struggled very early on just for basic necessities and food,” he says.
Those struggles led to a life-long commitment to helping others.
“The thing I most wanted to change was to find ways for young people like myself to have access to more opportunities,” Dr. Leaphart said recently. “It wasn’t necessarily that people weren’t smart enough to succeed. It was just that we weren’t presented with the right opportunities.”
He knew he wanted to be a doctor from age 5. “I needed to find a path out of poverty and I also needed to be in a position to help people,” he said. “And medicine is a healing profession. You go into medicine because you want people to feel better and you want to make society better. And I knew it was something that would make my mother extremely proud.”
He graduated from Central High School and then attended Hampton University, a historically Black college in Virginia.
“I still had a bit of a rough exterior when I went” to Hampton, he said. He was suspended for a semester for getting into a fight. He thought that his suspension might keep him out of medical school despite excellent grades. “Thankfully, things happen,” he said. He earned his medical degree at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and a business degree at St. Joseph’s University.
While Dr. Leaphart was in medical school, he started a commercial cleaning company. He met the late Gerry Lenfest, who was a billionaire and philanthropist, while cleaning Mr. Lenfest’s Suburban Cable Co. office. The chance meeting led to Mr. Lenfest becoming his mentor, friend, and business partner.
Now Dr. Leaphart serves as chairman of the board of the Lenfest Foundation. The foundation works to help disadvantaged and under-served youth in the Philadelphia area.
“He [Gerry Lenfest] was like a Santa who carried a sack of opportunities with him,” Dr. Leaphart said. “He was someone who empowered me, and I am forever grateful to him for giving me that opportunity.”
