The AdColor Industry Coalition, a nonprofit group that supports and inspires professionals of color and champions diversity in the advertising, marketing and media sectors, announced its 2011 award winners.
Among those honored were Rising Star Award winner Kenji Summers, community manager, BBH ZAG; Lifetime Achievement Award winner Earl G. Graves Sr., chairman, founder and publisher of Black Enterprise; One Club/AdColor Creative Award winner Keith Cartwright, creative chairman, managing director, West Studios; Donna Lamar, creative director at TBWAChiatDay-Los Angeles; and Steve Stoute, founder and CEO of Translation LLC.
Read what Stoute has to say about his new book, The Tanning of America, and how hip-hop has given young Americans a shared cultural experience. Watch him talk about this with Jay-Z, Pharrell and Lady Gaga.
Check out The Root's gallery of past and present leaders in advertising, branding and marketing.
First Black Woman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
Bernice Donald has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate, with a vote of 96-2, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The 6th Circuit, one of 13 circuits on the U.S. Court of Appeals (COA), includes the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, which have a total of 32 million inhabitants.
Donald was the first black female judge elected in Tennessee. She also served on the federal bankruptcy court and presided over a U.S. district court for 16 years. There are 179 judges on the COA. Their positions have lifetime tenure and an annual salary of $184,500.
As the nation's second-highest judicial body, the COA is influential in case law because its circuits set legal precedent. They are also the final arbiters in most federal cases, since the U.S. Supreme Court, which sits above them, hears fewer than 100 of the about 10,000 cases filed with it annually.
Which Group Has the Lowest Educational Achievement?
A report from the National Conference of State Legislatures states that only 19 percent of Hispanic adults have a college degree, compared with 26 percent of blacks and 42 percent of whites. There's no cause for anyone to celebrate: College-graduation rates in the United States are woefully low for such a wealthy nation. For a country mired in an economic malaise, these percentages should be a sharp stick in the sides of elected officials to urge them to attain the true prizes: economic and job growth.
ENTREPRENEURS
Where Are the Black Jobs? Maybe on This Website
Dante Lee, 27, a Bowie State University computer science graduate, and William Moss, who has a software-development degree from Hampton University, are tech nerds with a twist. They are the founders of Lee Moss Media of Columbus, Ohio, an umbrella for Web ventures dedicated to informing and connecting the black community socially and economically.
Their latest venture is blackjobs.com. Never humble, the duo claims the site is "the Largest African American Jobs and Career Network." Its Web target, like much of Lee Moss Media, named below, is a Millennial audience, job seekers who are college graduates, as well as noncollege professionals with three-plus years of experience. Employers post jobs, and job seekers upload résumés and apply for thousands of full-time and part-time positions listed on the site, which includes an employment-related news feed.
Lee created blacknews.com, blackpr.com and blackstudents.com. In 1999 Moss founded HBCU Connect, the largest historically black college online social network, with 1.2 million members. The client roster of Lee Moss Media includes Ford, Allstate and Google.
The keys to blackjobs.com's success may be whether members of HBCU Connect and their friends migrate to the site and, more important, in these postrecessionary times, whether employers will actually hire anyone.
Someone You Need to Know: Eddie Brown, Founder of $4 Billion Brown Capital Management
In the early 1990s, I created Black Enterprise magazine's investment roundtable because its readers needed to know about securities specialists such as Eddie Brown of Brown Capital Management. For 25 years, Brown was a regular guest on the PBS program Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser. BCM has a small-company fund that is four-star rated and a midcap fund that is five-star rated.
Brown, 70, was recently interviewed by USA Today. The Howard University grad is a philanthropist and author of Beating the Odds: Eddie Brown's Investing and Life Strategies. (To see the USA Today article, scroll down to his photo after clicking this link: 5 Questions for Eddie Brown.)
DIFFERENT STROKES
Hootie Left the Blowfish and Rock and Roll to Be a Country Star
In 2007 Darius Rucker left his kazillion-CD-selling band to make a living singing country. And has he ever, with five No. 1 hits, including "This" and "It Won't Be Like This for Long." Find out how he made the transition.
From Horse Trainer to Circus Cowboy
Andre McClain, a performer and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus preshow host, is probably the most visible black cowboy in the United States. An article about him in the Kansas City Star begins with the words, "Andre McClain was a grown man by the time he ran away to join the circus. But that's essentially what he did."
Erykah Badu Plans to Switch Careers
The natural (or is it au naturel?) diva has decided on another vocation beside entertainer. After assisting a friend giving birth, Badu wants to become a doula, or midwife. Now at least the appropriate person, the baby, will be nude.
Women-Owned Roofing Company Makes SBA History
Atlanta's Advantage Building Contractors, Inc. has made its mark in construction. In August, Advantage won the first federal Women-Owned Small Business construction contract. The work is at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, the main research facility for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. British-born Lynn Sutton is CEO of Advantage, and her partner and president is Trish Summers. The company also has a $1.4 million federal contract to install a LEED- and Energy Star-certified reflective roofing system for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Mobile Applications Created by African-American Inventors
Black inventors are moving into the mobile apps development field, and it's about time. Apple's App Store sells more than 425,000 mobile apps for the iPhone. Its rival, Android Marketplace, has more than 30,000 apps available.
Last year I wrote about a pair of brilliant Spelman women, Jonecia Keels and Jazmine Miller, who won the 2010 AT&T National Mobile App competition. Their creation was the HBCU Buddy. Accoridng to the website Today's Drum, "It educates users about historically black colleges and universities. It has customizable social networking features and information about every HBCU."
This year the duo's innovation is joined by Inky-Apps! a Web store created for the "promotion, advertisement and development of mobile applications for the undeveloped and undiscovered mobile markets." Richard Fields, the founder, who graduated from Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus, was a senior network technical analyst at Hewlett-Packard. Listen to Fields on BlogTalkRadio.
Another popular application, Multiple Madness, was created by Veda Rogers, an Android mobile-application developer.
Made in America: The Economics of Black Art
The Atlanta Post published an informative piece that tracks the rising value of African-American art throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and explores how it has become more popular and, naturally, more expensive. In 2007 New York City's Swann Auction Galleries created a new department specifically to sell these treasures.
In the article, Dr. Imo Nse Imeh, assistant professor of art and art history at Westfield State University in Massachusetts, says that the cultural and identifying racial themes affect the value and price determined by the art world. "One must always keep this in mind: The white artist is the mainstream artist. Mainstream art is a white world. It is controlled by a white circle, therefore determining who can purchase art."
The Bottom Line Bookshelf
In his new book, The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in Its Place, Hill Harper, 45, wants to help readers avoid personal and financial pitfalls. There is nothing unexpected in Harper's approach, but his commonsense suggestions for handling personal-finance, budgeting and spending issues should resonate. The actor, author, Ivy Leaguer and philanthropist urges readers to think of money as a tool, not as a result.
Recently, Harper spoke to The Root about his cancer diagnosis and what he was thinking while writing The Wealth Cure. He is also the author of Letters to a Young Brother and The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships.
On the Move, and Notable
Atlanta: Bronwyn Morgan was hired as vice president of strategic marketing and business development by DMI Music & Media.
Boston: Wayne Budd, 69, will receive a Lifetime Achiever award from the American Lawyer on Oct. 26. Budd was a co-founder of Budd, Wiley & Richlin, a mostly black law firm in Boston. Budd has been attorney general of Massachusetts, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts and an associate attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, the department's third-highest post. He is a senior counsel for the Boston office of Goodwin Procter and was general counsel for John Hancock Life Insurance Co.
Birmingham: H. Lanier Brown II has been selected as one of the Best Lawyers in America 2012. He is a partner in Huie, Fernambucq & Stewart LLP.
Quentin P. Riggins has joined Alabama Power Co. as vice president and director of governmental affairs. The former Auburn football player spent 17 years in Alabama government service.
Dallas: Stephen Myles was hired as a business development executive at RN Jobs USA, a health care company. Previously, Myles spent 17 years in banking.
Houston: Ricky A. Raven, a law partner at Thompson & Knight, has been appointed chair of the board of directors of the University of Houston Alumni Association.
Philadelphia: Derek Green, who works for the City Council of Philadelphia, has been appointed president of the board of directors of Center in the Park, a nonprofit community center in Northwest Philadelphia focused on the needs of older people.
North Carolina Triangle: Emerick Woods has just been hired as the CEO and president of Talari Networks, Inc. The company creates private network technology for wide-area networks. Woods founded several tech companies and completed two IPOs. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a computer science degree from Yale.
Adrienne Lumpkin is president of Alternate Access, Inc., an information-technology company. The Harvard MBA, who previously worked for IBM and Hewlett-Packard, joined the board of the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County.
Seattle: Miles Craigwell was hired by Kibble & Prentice/USI, a financial-management company, as a sales executive. The Brown University graduate and former NFL tryout is a member of the U.S. national rugby team. Follow on Twitter and watch his video.
Washington, D.C.: Suzanne Ffolkes was hired by Research!America, a group dedicated to increasing medical research funding, as vice president and director of communications. She had been director of media advocacy at the American Heart Association.
September
Minority Enterprise Development Week
Sept. 27-30
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, D.C.
The annual conference is sponsored by the Minority Business Development Agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The event connects thousands of minority entrepreneurs with public- and private-sector organizations and companies.
October
The Executive Leadership Council
The 25th Anniversary Recognition Gala
Oct. 19-21
The ELC is made up of the most senior African-American corporate executives in Fortune 500 companies, representing well over 380 major corporations.
The Executive Leadership Council Mid-Level Managers' Symposium
Innovation: A Blueprint for Building Your Future
Oct. 21
Gaylord National Harbor, Maryland
The Mid-Level Managers' Symposium prepares the next generation of black corporate leaders. Click here to register.
Women in Technology International
Women Powering Technology Summit
Oct. 2-4
San Jose, Calif.
National Black MBA Association
33rd Annual Conference & Exposition
Oct. 4-8
Atlanta
Established in 1970, the National Black MBA Association is dedicated to developing partnerships that result in the creation of intellectual and economic wealth in the black community.
The Women of Color (STEM) Conference
(STEM = science, technology, engineering or math)
Nov. 3-5
Hilton Anatole Hotel
2201 Stemmons Freeway
Dallas
214-748-1200
The Women of Color (WOC) STEM Conference is focused on the development of STEM women and ensures that their achievements are celebrated. Participants at the conference include women attending high school, college and graduate school with an interest to entering STEM field.
The Women of Color (STEM) Conference is part of the Career Communications Group family of organizations. CCG publishes Black Engineer & Information Technology, Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology and Women of Color in Business & Technology magazines.
Frank McCoy writes about business and technology for The Root. You can contact him here.
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