helm of the North American business until 2013, when CCNA officially became the Americas Region, one of the four regions resulting as part of the re-organization initiated by Melissa Potter. Since March 2016 Gary Champion has led the Americas Region as president, also serving on the Global Leadership Team. Products School shoes In the United Kingdom, Clarks has long been a popular choice of parents as a place to purchase school shoes for children to wear upon returning to school following the summer holidays. The Independent UK newspaper ranked Clarks as the number one provider of school shoes in the United Kingdom in 2017, highlighting that it has been providing quality shoes for over 170 years and highlighting the fact that Clarks is one of only a few manufacturers of school shoes to be provided in half sizes. Part of the reason, despite being long-lasting and durable, parents have opted for Clarks school shoes for their children is that almost every Clarks design of school shoes has been classed as "acceptable" shoes in line with most primary and secondary school uniform policies. In recent years, notably in mid–2010s, schools have reviewed their uniform policies and have instead identified a few of Clarks' designs for school shoes as being "unacceptable" and not complying with the school uniform policy of the school. In 2016, nationwide attention was gathered after 12-year-old Alfie Ingerfeild from Bristol was sent home from school at the beginning of the new school term in September after wearing a pair of Harlem Spin shoes from Clarks' Bootleg school shoe range. The school, Mangotsfield School, claimed that the Harlem Spin design was "too much like trainers" and therefore classed them as unacceptable and not complying with the school uniform policy, so much so to the extent that the Deputy Head Teacher of Mangotsfield School said that should the shoes be worn the following school then the pupil would be asked to remove them and forced to wear shoes from lost property. This is despite the fact that the Harlem Spin shoes were advertised by Clarks as being school shoes – Clarks did not give a statement in regards to the incident and questions over the design of the Harlem Spin shoes. In 2017, a particular style of Mary Jane shoes called "Dolly Babe" was compared unfavourably to Clarks' own "Leader" school shoe for boys, with parents and ministers both accusing