Recognizing and honoring minority men and women who are making a difference in technology is the reason Career Communications Group (CCG) was founded 20 years ago, and it remains our primary goal today.

Through this recognition, we hope to instill in others the drive to succeed through education and dedication to their own goals and dreams. CCG salutes these amazing men and women as representatives of the many African Americans quietly going about the business of reinventing, guiding, and building America.

Rodney Adkins
Vice President, Development
IBM Systems and Technology Group

Paget L. Alves
President, South Region
Sprint Sales and Distribution

Joseph S. Amado
V.P. Information Services
Philip Morris U.S.A. 

Edward Anderson
Chief Information Officer
Peace Corps

James R. Andrade, Ph.D.
V.P.
Research and Development-Asia Pacific
Kraft Foods, Inc.

Kevin Apperson
CIO
Allegis Group

Cozy Bailey
V.P.
Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
US Government Solutions

James A. Bell
CFO/Executive V.P. Finance
The Boeing Company

Gina Billings
President
BDPA

Gwendolyn E. Boyd
Exec. Asst. to Chief of Staff
Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory

Shirley W. Bridges
CEO, Delta Technology &
CIO, Delta Air Lines

Thomas K. (Tony) Brown
Senior V.P. Global Purchasing
Ford Motor Company 

Ursula M. Burns
President,
Business Group Operations
Xerox Corporation

Curvie Burton
Senior Director, Client Operations
EDS

Frank M. Clark
Chairman  & CEO
ComEd

Phillip L. Clay, Ph.D.
Chancellor and Professor of City Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Norma B. Clayton
V.P. Global Sourcing Initiative
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems

Joseph  R. Cleveland
CIO, President
Lockheed Martin Enterprise Information Systems
Lockheed Martin Corporation

Wilmer Cooksey Jr.
Plant Manager, Bowling Green Assembly
General Motors Corporation

H. James Dallas
Snr. V.P. and CIO
Medtronic

Greg Daniels
Snr. V.P.
U.S. Manufacturing
Nissan North America, Inc.

Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Chancellor
University Systems of Georgia

Martin B. Davis
Corporate CIO and Executive V.P.
Wachovia Corporation

Mark E. Dean, Ph.D.
IBM Fellow and V.P.
IBM Almaden Research Center

Willie A. Deese
President, Merck Manufacturing
Merck & Co., Inc.

Cheick Diarra
Chairman
Microsoft Africa

W. Roy Dunbar
President - Global Technology and Operations
MasterCard International

Anna Everett, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Film and Media Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

Monte E. Ford
Snr. V.P. IT, CIO
American Airlines, Inc. 

Dr. Joseph Francisco
President
National Organization for Professional Advancement
for Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE)

Arthur (Art) L. George
Senior V.P., High Performance Analog
Texas Instruments

Linda Gooden
President
Lockheed Martin Information Technology

Kim Goodman
V.P. S&P CoC
Dell Inc.

Byron M. Green
V.P. Truck and Activity
Vehicle Assembly Manufacturing
DaimlerChrysler Corporation

Rodney E. Harrigan
Vice Chancellor for IT and Telecommunications
North Carolina A&T State University

David Harris
Snr. V.P.
Sun Microsystems

William J. Harvey
V.P. and General Manager
DuPont Advanced Fiber Systems
Dupont Personal Protection

Wyllstyne D. Hill
V.P. and CIO, Missile Systems
Raytheon Company

Kerrie L. Holley
CTO
IBM Web Services 
SOA Center of Excellence

Milton Hunter, P.E.
Snr. V.P. Parsons Infrastructure and Technology
Parsons Corporation

Shirley A. Jackson, Ph. D.
President
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and
American Association for the Advancement of Science 

Anthony R. James
Executive V.P.
President, Shared Services Group
Southern Company 

Samuel Jenkins
V.P. Ethics and Business Conduct
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems 

Arthur E. Johnson
Snr. V.P. Corporate Strategic Development
Lockheed Martin Corporation

Eddie Bernice Johnson
Congresswoman/ Ranking Dem. Member,
U.S. House of Representatives 

Sandra K. Johnson, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Staff Member,
CTO, Global Small and Medium Business
IBM Corporation

Gen. (Ret.) Lester  L. Lyles
President & CEO
The Lyles Group 

Frank L. Miller Jr.
V.P. Dell Americas
Manufacturing Fulfillment Operations
Dell Inc.

Gregory B. Morrison
V.P. and CIO
Cox Enterprises, Inc.

James R. Nanton
CIO
Sara Lee Branded Apparel

Gen. (Ret.) Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton
Executive V.P.
Pratt and Whitney 

Rodney O'Neal
President and CEO
Delphi Corporation 

William Osborne
Director of Engineering
General Dynamics 

Marcia Page
Vice President
Texas Instruments 

Colin J. Parris
Development V.P.
Systems and Technology Group
IBM 

Vallerie Parrish-Porter
CIO, Snr. V.P.
Embarq Corporation 

Richard Parsons
Chairman and CEO
Time Warner

Philip Paulwell
Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology
Government of Jamaica

George D. Peterson, Ph.D., P.E
Executive Director
ABET, Inc. 

Charles E. Phillips, Jr.
President
Oracle Corporation

Thomas S. Sayles
V.P. Governmental and Community Affairs
Sempra Energy 

Robert L. Shepard, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Science and Engineering Alliance, Inc. (SEA) 

Dr. Ruth Simmons
President of Brown University 

John Brooks Slaughter, Ph.D., P.E.
President and CEO
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc.

William D. Smith, P.E.
President
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc.

Paula Sneed
Executive V.P.
Global Marketing Resources & Initiatives
Kraft Foods, Inc.

Lauren C. States
V.P.
S/WG Technical Sales Enablement
IBM 

Ainsley A. Stewart Jr.
National Chairperson
National Society of Black Engineers

Nancy Stewart
Snr. V.P. & CTO
Wal-Mart Inc. 

Hugh Taylor
President, Commercial State & Local Groups
Northrop Grumman Information Technology

David Thomas
V.P. & Worldwide Director
Texas Instruments, Inc.

Lydia W. Thomas, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Member, Board of Trustees
Mitretek Systems, Inc.

John W. Thompson
Chairman of the Board & CEO
Symantec Corporation 

Thelma B. Thompson, Ph.D.
President
University of Maryland Eastern Shore 

Don Thompson
President
McDonald’s Corporation 

Lloyd G. Trotter
President & CEO
GE Consumer and Industrial

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D.
Frederick P. Rose Director
Hayden Planetarium Astrophysicist
American Museum of Natural History

Edward T. Welburn Jr.
V.P. Global Design
General Motors Corporation

Dwayne A. Wilson
Snr. V.P. & General Manager
Fluor Corporation

****

Rodney Adkins
Vice President, Development
IBM Systems and Technology Group

IBM is a $90 billion a year powerhouse whose technological prowess is determined by the continuing developments from 30 laboratories, staffed by 15,000 engineers and computer scientists in 17 countries. Running this international trove of brainpower is Rodney Adkins, the physicist and electrical engineer who has worked his way up through the development ranks to manage the engineering development network.
 
The labs under Adkins designed and built all the leading gaming consoles – Sony Play Station, Nintendo Game Cube and Microsoft X-Box – as well as the microprocessors running the Mars Rover, the 3D CAD/CAM design systems for Toyota and other car companies, super computers and mainframe operating systems, to name a few, and produce half the 3,000 patents IBM earns annually.
 
Adkins ran the lab where Mark Dean developed the architecture for the first PC, and ran the development of UNIX-based systems until IBM claimed more than a third of the worldwide market. On his way up, he worked on the development of “pervasive computing,” the technology which enables cell phones, Blackberries, OnStar and other multi-tasking portable systems to handle a variety of chores. From there, Adkins helped develop “intelligent” vending machines and tagging systems which recognize store customers, and customize their shopping experiences.

And, in an industry with a dearth of minority professionals, he follows a policy of “reaching back and pulling through. It is the responsibility of each generation to help prepare the next generation, because the environment changes and becomes much more competitive.”

Paget L. Alves
President, South Region
Sprint Sales and Distribution

When Sprint decided last year to restructure into four, vertically integrated, regional divisions, it did not have to look far within its ranks to find the individual to handle all business, government and consumer groups, wired and mobile broadband for the 11-state southern region stretching from Oklahoma and Texas to the eastern seaboard.
 
The company tagged Paget Alves, the former president of its Business Services Group – which served the company’s 100 largest customers and brought in $4.5 billion – to be president of the new South Region. In this capacity, Alves, who has 20 years’ management experience in technology companies, took over an operation with some 5,000 employees generating $12 billion in revenues.

Alves has been managing the growth of technology companies since receiving his law degree from Cornell University in 1982 and joining IBM’s legal team. “The bug to spend more time on the business side of a technology organization bit me pretty early,” Alves said.

So in 1988 he moved from IBM to the Dallas-based Murata Business Systems – a $300 million distribution company for Japanese fax and cellular systems – as Chief Operating Officer.
 
He joined Sprint in 1996, starting as manager of Sprint long distance services, and heading a staff of 250. His group increased the firm’s market share from 12 percent to 16 percent in just two years, and produced revenues of $700 million. In the decade since joining Sprint, Alves has assumed increasing responsibilities for strategic planning, marketing, personnel management, and the development of new technology markets.

“The telecom industry is a fascinating and fast changing field,” he said. “Sprint was just a local phone company 25 years ago, and now it is a $40 billion, Fortune 50 company in the wireless business. We have built out a wireless network throughout North America that is growing more than 50 percent year after year.  That is a perfect example of the speed of change in our industry.”

Alves has been active in efforts to recruit more minority engineers to Sprint’s ranks as part of a management advisory board. “We try to make sure we can be viewed as a company that is exhibiting best practices in developing an inclusive culture,” said Alves.

“There are actually fewer African Americans in the telecom industry relative to our numbers in the general population, and in a variety of the other industry sectors. And I think that needs to change.”

Joseph S. Amado
Vice President, Information Services
Philip Morris U.S.A.

For the past 20 years, Philip Morris, U.S.A. has been the nation’s preeminent tobacco and food company. The 100-year-old, Fortune 500 company stays ahead of the pack with some 12,000 employees in Virginia and North Carolina, and a distribution network spanning the country.
 
Maintaining the information management system that runs Philip Morris is the responsibility of Joseph Amado, Vice President for Information Services. Amado, a graduate of Winston-Salem Sate University, worked in information systems for Nestle before joining Philip Morris in 1986 as a computer analyst.  He progressed through the ranks, becoming IT manager of the firm’s Louisville, Ky. Facility in 1992; IT director of the Information Services Sales Organization, based in Richmond, in 1997; and assuming his current post in June, 2000.

He serves as a Trustee of the Board of Directors for Winston-Salem State University, and the Association for children in Richmond, Va.

Edward Anderson
CIO
Peace Corps

For 45 years, the Peace Corps has sent thousands of young Americans to 138 countries around the globe to work on projects that have improved the lives of millions. A challenge to the effectiveness of the Corps, and the safety of the Volunteers, has been the difficulty in providing communications and information to regions where there may be limited or no telecommunications structure.

Overcoming that problem has been the mission of Ed Anderson, Chief Information Officer for the Peace Corps, who is responsible for both its domestic information technology systems, and the diverse overseas information needs. Anderson is credited with providing 21st Century Internet technology to Peace Corps Volunteers in Third World countries by deploying satellite communications networks to technologically isolated regions. The use of the satellite network has greatly expanded the Corps’ educational mission in developing regions of the world.

Anderson, who earned a degree in management information systems from American University, serves on several non-profit boards, including the Expion Corp., TechStars, Expanding Horizons Youth Programs, and the Rockville Pregnancy Center.
 

James R. Andrade, Ph.D.
Vice President Research and Development-Asia Pacific
Kraft Foods, Inc.

You can go virtually anywhere in the world and eat a meal from the kitchens of Kraft Foods, the world’s second largest food and beverage company. Kraft provides $34 billion dollars worth of meals and snacks in 150 countries.
 
But the firm’s prominence since 1903 has as much to do with technological innovation as it does with culinary arts. The company that pioneered powdered soft drinks with Kool-Aid and commercially packaged cheese, and has seven billion-dollar brands, relies on its research and development to keep it in the forefront of worldwide taste competition. For the Asian palate, that is the responsibility of James Andrade, vice president of research and development. Andrade received his Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, and earned his Master’s and PhD in neuroscience from Howard University in the nation’s capital.

Kevin Apperson
Chief Information Officer
Allegis Group

Kevin Apperson is the chief technologist of the world’s largest, privately held, information technology staffing firm. The Allegis Group provides technology support for some 4,000 clients from 220 offices in the U.S., Canada and Europe. The firm, with 6,000 staff professionals and more than 75,000 contract workers, provides IT solutions for government clients and 90 of the Fortune 100 companies, spanning diverse fields of banking, financial services, healthcare, insurance and transportation.
 

Cozy Bailey
Vice President
Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
US Government Solutions

Cozy Bailey has amassed a 30-year record of IT achievement in the military environment as both a Marine Corps officer, and in his civilian role as EDS Vice President for the technology firm’s government business.

Bailey attended the U.S. Naval Academy, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and then earned his M.B.A. from Boston University. From 1975 through 1998, Bailey served in the U.S. Marine corps in a variety of key IT assignments. He was chief information officer for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force in North Carolina, where he set the information technology policy for the 35,000-member force, including the command staff. He was in charge of IT support services for the 1st Marine Division during Operation Desert Storm, and operated their information nodes during the conflict.

Bailey joined EDS in 1998, responsible for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet program and devising long term solutions for the service’s evolving technological needs. Bailey’s charter included the technology needs of the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commander of the Navy Air systems Command and their staffs.

James A. Bell
Chief Financial Officer/Executive Vice President, Finance
The Boeing Company

The Boeing Company is synonymous with modern flight.
 
From commercial and private aircraft to space systems, the $52 billion airplane and defense company has pioneered the technical advance of modern flight systems. James A. Bell, Chief Financial Officer of the world’s largest aerospace company – with 157,000 employees – also served for a brief period in 2005 as Boeing’s interim president and chief executive officer.

Bell is responsible for the overall financial management of the company, including its financial reporting and transparency, corporate and strategic development, and customer financing. He also oversees Boeing’s Shared Services Group, a $6.8 billion business unit with 16,000 employees, which provides services across Boeing’s enterprises, including its global computing and network infrastructure, facilities and real estate, safety and environmental affairs.

Bell, who earned an accounting degree from California State University at Los Angeles, began his career with Rockwell in 1972 before joining Boeing 33 years ago. He also serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Urban League, and the Dow Chemical Company.

Gina Billings
President
BDPA

As if one full time job weren’t enough; Gina Billings has two.
 
The electrical engineer manages vendor service delivery throughout the United States and Canada for Hewlett Packard, ensuring reliability and customer satisfaction for an array of products.
 
But she is also president of the Black Data Processing Associates, a 31-year-old organization representing thousands of blacks in computer technology served by 55 chapters across the country. The organization is the primary institution seeking to improve minority access to the computer field, and increase the numbers of minorities in middle and upper management throughout the technology industry.

Billings earned an Associates of Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati, and a Bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Xavier University.
 

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Boyd
Executive Assistant to the Chief of Staff
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Gwendolyn Boyd’s formative years took place in the civil rights crucible of Montgomery, Alabama, where the desire for Blacks to achieve their potential clashed with the most entrenched elements of American racism.

“I never met an engineer growing up,” Boyd said. “There were no Black professional role models back then: None whatsoever. They told me African Americans can’t do science, and girls can’t do math. But I had the interest in math and science, and I just pursued it. It was what I enjoyed doing more than anything else, and I kept working at it.

“My whole life is a testimony to not listening to people who tell you you can’t, and then understanding that you can.”

She earned a Bachelor’s in mathematics with a minor in physics at Alabama State University in Montgomery, and then a Masters in mechanical engineering at Yale. In 1980 she joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, a research institution with an astonishing array of engineering enterprises including microbiology, ocean research, naval submarine systems, earth observations and communications network, and deep space probes to the far reaches of the solar system.

She began working as an analyst in the Strategic Systems Department for the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident submarines, developing the performance factors, evaluation and readiness of the nation’s primary line of nuclear defense. Her roles included software evaluation, from concept to implementation. After 18 years in strategic systems, she became executive assistant to the chief of staff, a role with fiscal oversight responsibilities for all Laboratory operations, information assurance for its varied satellite programs, and oversight of the APL’s outreach programs to minority students.

The APL runs the Maryland MESA program for students in grades K-12, as the Atlas Technology Scholars, which are engineering students from HBCUs and Hispanic institutions with grade point averages of 3.5 or better who become interns at the Laboratory. She is also a founding member of the GEM program - and the APL supports GEM scholars.
 
“We are working to develop minority talent from kindergarten through post doctoral programs,” she said. “We have come a long way since Montgomery, and I am excited about the opportunities that this generation of young people will have.”

Boyd also chairs the diversity council for Johns Hopkins University, and is a board member of the National Alzheimer’s Association, Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority, the Children’s National Medical Center, the Board of Visitors of Bennett College for Women, and the Advisory Council of the College of Engineering, Architecture and Physical Science at Tuskegee University."

She also serves on the ministerial staff of Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Ft. Washington, Md., and is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Howard University.

Shirley W. Bridges
CEO, Delta Technology &
CIO, Delta Air Lines

For more than 30 years, Shirley Bridges has been at the forefront of innovation which has transformed the air travel and transportation industries.
 
Bridges took her mathematics degree from Clark Atlanta University and her Master’s in project management from George Washington University, and began a career with the Norfolk Southern Railroad. She took her technology and management expertise to Delta Airlines, working her way up through increasingly challenging positions to Director- ERP Systems and Large Systems Engineering, before becoming senior project manager in Delta’s IT department in 1990.

As the airline industry consolidated, IT became more important in ensuring smooth connections through a global network encompassing routes, personnel assignments, booking, passenger location and seating, flight control, baggage tracking, and inter-company connections. Bridges became Vice President of Airline Operations Systems, responsible for managing all software applications in the Technical Operations Center, handling IT needs for the airline’s maintenance and repair, daily logistics, pilot and flight attendant scheduling, and communications.

Bridges was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Delta Technology, the company’s technology subsidiary with 2,000 employees, which handles all aspect of passenger travel, from seat assignments and baggage tracking to providing wireless flight data, to personal data systems. From there, she was elevated to her current post as Chief Information Officer for the entire airline, and President and CEO of Delta Technology.

Thomas K. (Tony) Brown
Senior Vice President, Global Purchasing
Ford Motor Company

The incorporation of technology into the business world has drastically altered the financial operations of major firms. Managers need to be able to instantaneously monitor financial trends, and track inventories and sales on a global basis.

That is the world of Thomas K. (Tony) Brown, an economist trained at American International College in Springfield, Mass, who is responsible for some $90 billion in production for Ford brands worldwide.

Brown began his career at QMS Inc., a maker and provider of networked enterprise printing solutions, where he became executive director of corporate purchasing and transportation. He moved from there to United Technologies Automotive, where he was vice president of supply management. In 1999, he joined the auto company as director, Ford Purchasing, Global Strategic Planning and Process Leadership.
 
He was appointed to his present post in 2004.

Ursula M. Burns
President,
Business Group Operations
Xerox Corporation

Xerox, a company whose name has long been synonymous with office technology, first took notice of Ursula M. Burns in 1980, when they hired her as a mechanical engineering summer intern after she received her BS degree from Polytechnic Institute of New York.  She received her MS degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University the following year, and has risen through the company’s technical and managerial ranks ever since.

Today, Burns is a corporate senior vice president and president of Xerox’s Business Group Operations.  Her BGO consists of six divisions: production; office; paper, supplies and supply chain operations; information management; Xerox innovation group; and the Xerox Engineering Center.

Burns oversees a division which invents, manufactures and delivers Xerox products, including color printers for small offices, all-in-one printers/copiers that fax and scan for larger group employees to share, and digital production presses producing personalized color brochures at speeds of up to 110 pages per minute.

Burns oversees 14,000 employees worldwide producing some $14 billion in sales, and is responsible for Xerox’ global research, development, engineering, marketing and manufacturing.  She serves on several professional and community boards, including American Express, Boston Scientific Corp, CASA – Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and the University of Rochester.

Curvie Burton
Senior Director, Client Operations
EDS

EDS was at the forefront of the transformation of business management practices with the development of technological office solutions for a wide array of commercial and government clients. Today, EDS is a Fortune 100 firm, with some 120,000 employees in 60 countries providing technological management solutions to governments and corporations.

Curvie L. Burton, a computer scientist and mathematician trained at Michigan State University, has spent 30 years in the IT field as a software designer and engineer, data center manager, and IT consultant. As Senor Director of Client Operations for the Corporation, Burton supervises IT teams serving more than 1,000 client accounts around the globe.
 

Frank M. Clark
Chairman  & CEO
ComEd

Forty years ago, Frank M. Clark took his Bachelor’s and law degrees from DePaul University, and began a steady rise through the ranks of ComEd, the electric utility company serving some 5.2 million customers throughout northern Illinois. He is now Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison,  and executive vice president and chief of staff of its parent company, Exelon Corp., which runs the nation’s largest fleet of nuclear power plants.

ComEd has a staff of 6,000 responsible for maintaining more than 78,000 miles of power lines comprising the electric transmission and distribution system in Northern Illinois. It is a region that covers 70 percent of the state’s population, including the economic power center of Chicago, and stretches from the Wisconsin border to the north, the Iowa border to the west, and the Indiana border to the east.

Clark is responsible for implementing the strategic, regulatory and legislative goals of the company. During his career, he has served in several leadership positions, including customer service operations, marketing and sales, regulatory and community affairs, information technology, and labor relations.

In addition, Clark has been active in a variety of civic functions. He led the development of the African-American Legacy Fund, a $3 million endowment in partnership with The Chicago Community Trust to broaden education, the arts and community development to meet the changing needs of the community. He serves on the Executive Committee of The Chicago Community Trust.  Clark is also co-chairman of the DuSable Capital Campaign, a $24 million initiative to expand the DuSable Museum, the nation’s first museum devoted to African-American arts and culture.  In addition, Clark was instrumental in revitalizing the Harold Washington Cultural Center on Chicago’s south side, which features the ComEd Theater, a 1,000-seat performing arts hall.

Clark serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum; and is a member of the board of trustees of DePaul University, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The University of Chicago Hospitals & Health System, and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.
 

Phillip L. Clay, Ph.D.
Chancellor and Professor of City Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT was founded at the close of the Civil War with the mission to provide the educational leadership in an increasingly industrialized society.  A century and a half later, MIT has become the nation’s foremost engineering university, with a mission to educate students in science and technology to serve the world through the 21st century.
 
At the helm of this institution – with five schools and one college encompassing 34 academic departments – is Phillip L. Clay, the Chancellor and a Professor of City Planning. As Chancellor, Professor Clay has oversight responsibility for graduate and undergraduate education at MIT, student life, and student services. Professor Clay chairs the MIT Council on the Environment, and serves on the board of the Cambridge-MIT Institute.

Clay received his AB degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1968, and then earned a PhD in city planning at MIT in 1975. He then joined the faculty and rose through the academic ranks. From 1980 to 1984, Professor Clay served as Assistant Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard. He was Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 1992 to 1994, and its Associate Department Head during 1990 to 1992. He served as associate provost in the office of the provost – the second ranking official at MIT – from 1994 to 2001.

Professor Clay is widely known for his work in U.S. housing policy and community-based development, and has been involved in several studies that received national attention. For example, in a 1987 study commissioned by the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., he identified the market and institutional conditions contributing to the erosion of low-income rental housing, and documented the need for a national preservation policy. He later served on the national commission that recommended the policy that became part of the Housing Act of 1990.
 
Professor Clay is President of the Board of Directors of the Community Builders, the nation's largest nonprofit developer of affordable housing. In recent years, Professor Clay has served as a senior advisor on projects in several areas that include public housing, community capacity building, and urban job initiatives.

Norma B. Clayton
VP Global Sourcing Initiative
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems

In the early 1970s, when central Newark was a mass of abandoned buildings and rubble from the 1965 riots, a young Norma B. Clayton took frequent bus rides across town.
 
“I commuted to school for a year in Orange,” she recalled, “and would ride that Number 24 bus up and down Central Avenue  every day, watching all those people sitting around at 7 am with no place to go and nothing to do. And I’d say to myself that someday I’m going to get out of this place.”

Sometimes, young Clayton would stay on the bus past her stop, and head down near the port area. “I used to go to Newark Airport when they were just starting to build the international airport,” she said, “and watch the airplanes take off, and say I am going to ride an airplane some day.
 
“Little did I realize that one day I would spend 80 percent of my life riding airplanes that my company builds.”

Norma Clayton has come a long way from Newark. She is now vice president, global sourcing initiative, for the $52 billion Boeing Company. It is a cross-cutting position in which she is tasked with improving performance and production of the supply chain throughout all of Boeing’s enterprises in 67 countries.

Clayton has one of four new management posts created by CEO James McNerney whose responsibilities span the breadth of the 100-year-old aircraft company’s operations, and affect the performance of its 157,000 employees. It was a natural choice. Boeing stays the world’s largest aerospace company by maintaining a global preeminence in technology and manufacturing so it can compete in the world marketplace for the sale of its high-performance military products.

In many cases, its competitors are firms backed by national governments and, as such, they would have an edge in the marketplace, if all things were equal. Boeing stays the preeminent aircraft company by making sure all is not equal; its technology is superior, and the parts going into manufacturing do not add needless expense and time to the process.
 
Ensuring that level of competitiveness throughout Boeing’s operations is Clayton’s role. She came to Boeing from McDonnell Douglas in 1995, as the first African American to direct the Machining Center in St. Louis, which produces the F-15, F/A-18, T-45, and AV- 8B military aircraft with 23,000 employees. It took her less than two years to reduce cycle time at the plant by 60 percent, and rework by 20 percent.

Clayton earned a reputation for scrapping the traditional methods of operation in favor of smarter processes in which employees are empowered to embrace greater responsibilities and eliminate time consuming practices which add nothing to efficiency or quality. This led to her becoming vice president, lean manufacturing, for Boeing’s Military Aircraft and Missile Systems Group. In that post, she was named in 2000 as one of the Black Engineer of the Year recipients. From that position, she became vice president of supplier management and procurement.

“I’m looking at how to improve the flow of dollars we invest in technology, so we save money to the company and to our clients,” Clayton said.  “It’s about leveraging our spending and processes, and reengineering to make them leaner and better utilize our people.

“We are a big company, and there is always room for improvement. When you end up lean, there is a fallacy that you end up some place and stop. You don’t.  You transform your culture so you operate faster and are more efficient, and those improvements never stop.”

She still takes breaks in her travels to return to Newark, visiting the housing projects near the railroad tracks and talking to kids still in school about the need to pursue and education and change their lives.

“Black kids need to know about ordinary black people who come from ordinary beginnings and are changing society’s view about black people and making a difference in the world,” Clayton said. “If I had not had an education, I would still be in the housing project, sitting in the courts, with no hope and no dreams. I pinch myself sometimes, because I can’t believe this has happened to me. I go back to give the kids a chance to realize there is something they can do in their lives, so they have something real in the future to dream about.”
 

Joseph  R. Cleveland
CIO, President
Lockheed Martin Enterprise Information Systems
Lockheed Martin Corporation

Lockheed Martin is a $37.2 billion technology giant whose five divisions produce a range of innovations from deep space satellites and high performance jet craft to terrestrial IT systems delivering Social Security checks to the nation’s elderly.

It is the responsibility of Joseph Cleveland to make sure all the systems can function properly. Cleveland, who has spent more than 35 years in the information technology industry, heads the company’s Enterprise Information Systems – the in-house division which provides the IT support to headquarters and all its worldwide divisions. Cleveland’s staff maintains the world’s largest Windows NT network, handling nearly 4,000 help desk calls daily, and managing some 44 million e-mail messages per month.

They provide the technology infrastructure for the divisions and their products:
·Aeronautics – Makers of the F35, F22 and other military aircraft.
·Electronic Systems – Produces simulators and training for aircraft systems.
·Information and Technology Services – Designed and operates the computer networks for most of the United States government.
·Integrated Systems & Solutions – Develops IT solutions for transportation management and security.
·Space Systems – Designs communications and military satellites.
Cleveland received his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tennessee State University, and began his career in 1970 in the engineering department of GE Medical Systems. Over the next decade he held positions of increasing responsibility, including a stint as Managing Director of GE Medical Systems Operation in Radlett, England.

He moved from GE to Martin Marietta, rising to the position of vice president and general manager of the firm’s internal information systems when, in 1995, the company merged with Lockheed and his charter broadened.

Wilmer Cooksey Jr.
Plant Manager, Bowling Green Assembly Plant
General Motors Corporation

Thoughts get crystallized during a war. There are mortar shells exploding around you, causing wholesale mayhem, and snipers delivering death retail, one GI at a time. For First Lieutenant Wil Cooksey, Vietnam in 1969 was a long way from engineering school and drag races in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.

There are things a soldier hold onto in a war zone to remind him of the world he left behind, the world he wants to live to return to.

“I thought about what I would do when I got home,” Cooksey said, “and one of the main things was buying a sports car.”

Cooksey had a picture of a black ’69 Corvette that he cut from a magazine and posted on his barracks wall, and carried another with him out in the field.

“I read a lot of magazines,” he said, “and I was most impressed with the Corvette. I bought that one when I came back, just like the picture on my bunker wall.”

Owning a Corvette was just the beginning of Cooksey’s life-long affair with the legendary American road racer. He grew up in segregated Fort Worth, Texas “where I couldn’t sit downstairs in the movie theatre, since they put blacks in the balcony. And getting there, we rode in the back of the bus.

“Coming from Texas, I longed for the day I could leave and get an education, and get a good job.”

Cooksey pursued a degree in electrical engineering at Tennessee State University, graduating in 1965. It was a time of turmoil, he said, “and we’d go marching and had sit-ins and protests. All we wanted was equal rights.”

He began working as a process engineer at General Mills, the giant food maker, in Toledo, Ohio, and then spent two years as an officer in Vietnam.  After returning from the service – and buying a Corvette – Cooksey earned a Masters degree in industrial engineering and statistical analysis at the University of Toledo. General Motors asked him to teach plant management at the GM Institute in Flint, Michigan. Four years later, after earning a doctorate in systems analysis and design at Michigan State University, GM sent him on a series of assignments at different car and truck assembly plants until, in 1992, they offered him his dream job, running the Bowling Green assembly plant where the Corvette was made.

There was, however, a catch.  The ’Vette was in trouble and it was not clear that, after 63, there would be any new models on the road. Productivity was below 50 percent. Customer satisfaction was at rock bottom, with complaints about poor quality, leaky seals, rocky rides, a mediocre look and performance that no longer stood out against the sporty BMWs and Mercedes, and a new challenge coming from Chrysler’s Dodge Viper.

Cooksey transformed plant operations so dramatically that in 1995 GM decided to design a new generation of Corvettes, whose top of the line, Z06, is considered the finest production racer in the world. His success with the Corvette line prompted GM to entrust Cooksey and the Bowling Green plant with another high performing sports car: the Cadillac XLR, aimed at the market for Mercedes SL500.

At 64, Cooksey might be expected to slow down. “I’m not retiring anytime soon,” he asserts. “I have too much fun on the job.”

When he isn’t at the plant, or racing Corvettes on a drag strip, or flying airplanes, he is actively involved working with the next generation of black engineers. He is on the board of trustees at Tennessee State and the Western Kentucky University College of Education and Behavioral Science, and is chairman of Advancing Minorities’ Interest in Engineering (AMIE).

H. James Dallas
Snr. VP and CIO
Medtronic

One cannot talk of medicine and technology without including Medtronic.

The $11 billion firm, operating in 120 countries, specializes in the creation and monitoring of a wide range of cardiac and vascular equipment, from pacemakers to neurostimulators, to image-guided, surgical navigation systems.

 James Dallas is responsible for the technology which keeps the medical technology firm operational. Dallas is Medtronic’s Senior vice president and Chief Information Officer, as well as a member of the firm’s executive and operating committees.

Dallas received a B.S. in accounting from the University of South Carolina-Aiken, and an M.B.A. from Emory University. He began a 22-year career with Georgia Pacific, both on the operating side as general manager of the transportation division and president of the lumber division, and then moved to become vice president and chief information officer, prior to joining Medtronic.

Greg Daniels
Snr. VP, U.S. Manufacturing
Nissan North America, Inc.

Before Japanese car makers could truly challenge the Big Three American auto companies for the loyalty of the American motorists, they had to establish a local base of operations and produce their cars here. It is Greg Daniels’ charter to drive American manufacturing, producing quality cars and trucks in quantity to meet American needs and demands.

As senior vice president, U.S. Manufacturing, he oversees manufacturing operations in Mississippi and Tennessee. Nissan’s Canton, Miss. truck plant, with 3.5 million square feet and 4,100 employees, cranks out 400,000 vehicles annually, including the Nissan Quest minivan, full-size Armada SUV, Titan pickup truck, Altima mid-sized sedan, and Infiniti QX56 luxury SUV.

The  Tennessee operation – with a vehicle manufacturing facility in Smyrna and Powertrain assembly plant in Decherd - has 11,000 full or contract employees, and produces 550,000 vehicles, 950,000 engines, and 300,000 transaxles.

Daniels received his Bachelor's degree in mathematics from Albany State University in Albany, Ga., and began his career as an industrial engineer at the Ford Motor Company’s Wayne, Mich. Assembly Plant. He joined Nissan in 1982, and has held a variety of positions n manufacturing and quality control.

Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Chancellor
University Systems of Georgia

There were two significant events for higher education in Georgia in 1961:

·The University of Georgia, authorized in 1785 by the Georgia Legislature as the country’s first state-supported college, ended nearly two centuries of segregation and admitted its first two black students.

·A young Erroll B. Davis, Jr. entered Carnegie Mellon University in his native Pittsburgh, Pa., to pursue a degree in electrical engineering.

Integration would change the nature of higher education throughout the University System of Georgia, which consists of 35 institutions: four research universities, two regional universities, 13 state universities, seven state colleges, and nice two-year colleges. These institutions – including the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Savannah State and Fort Valley State Colleges – enroll more than 253,500 students, and employ more than 9,000 faculty and 35,000 employees to provide teaching and related services to students and the communities in which they are located.
 
They are governed by an 18-member Board of Regents which, since Feb., 2006, has been headed by Chancellor Errol Davis, who is the $5 billion University System’s chief executive officer.

Davis’ career has intertwined education and engineering. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon and receiving an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1967, he worked in engineering and management at Ford Motor Company and Xerox, before joining the Wisconsin Power and Light Co. in 1978.

From 1978, Davis began a rise through the management ranks at WPL, including terms as vice president of finance and CEO. From 1990 to 1998, Davis was CEO of WPL Holdings, the utility’s parent company. Davis was then selected to be chairman of the board of Alliant Energy Corporation – an energy holding company with $8.3 billion in total assets, and annual operating revenues of $3 billion. He joined Alliant just two years earlier as president and chief executive officer. Davis retired from his dual roles as president and CEO in July 2005, and retained the chairman's post until his move to the University System of Georgia.

Davis' higher education experience includes serving as a member of the University Of Wisconsin System Board Of Regents from 1987 to 1994, and as a former chairman of the board of trustees of his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, of which he is a life member. He presently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago.

Martin B. Davis
Corporate CIO and Executive Vice President
Wachovia Corporation

Modern banks are global information networks whose end product is money.

Keeping track of billions of dollars in assets or monitoring every $20 that comes from an ATM is all part of the daily operation of an integrated system which interacts with the Federal Reserve and other financial institutions around the global cyberspace.   At the Wachovia Corp., the nation’s fourth largest bank with $700 billion in assets and a staff of 110,000, it is up to Martin Davis to maintain a network serving 15 million households, 11.6 million online accounts and 5,200 ATMs.  Davis, the Chief Information Officer at the North Carolina bank company, joined the bank as a co-op student while pursuing a degree in business information systems at Winston-Salem State University. He joined the company full time after earning his B.S. degree in 1986.

Mark E. Dean, Ph.D.
IBM Fellow and VP
IBM Almaden Research Center

Mark Dean was the engineer at the forefront of the computer revolution.

Dean, an electrical engineer, holds four of the original nine patents for the architecture of the original IBM PC – including the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus, which permitted add-on devices like the keyboard, disk drives, and printers to be connected to the motherboard. He went on be the chief engineer behind the development of the first gigabyte chip, the IBM PC/AT, the PS/2 Model 70 and 80, the Color Graphics Adapter, and other subsystems.

Dr. Mark E. Dean is an IBM Fellow and vice president of the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. He oversees more than 400 scientists and engineers doing exploratory and applied research in various hardware, software and services areas, including nanotechnology, materials science, storage systems, data management, web technologies, workplace practices and user interfaces.

An engineer by training, Dean has more than 25 years experience in the IT industry -- all with IBM -- where he has been central to the design of a wide range of IBM computers. Prior to assuming leadership of the Almaden lab in 2004, Dean was vice president for hardware and systems architecture in IBM's Systems and Technology Group (STG) in Tucson, Arizona.

Prior to his time in Tucson, Dean was the vice president for Systems Research at IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he was responsible for the research and application of systems technologies spanning circuits to operating environments. Key technologies from his research team include petaflop supercomputer systems structures (BlueGene), digital visualization, design automation tools, Linux optimizations for servers and embedded systems, algorithms for computational science, memory compression, S/390 & PowerPC processors, embedded systems research, formal verification methods, and high-speed low-power circuits.

In 1997, Dean was named to be both director of the Austin Research Laboratory and director of Advanced Technology Development for the IBM Enterprise Server Group. Achievements there included testing of the first gigahertz CMOS microprocessor, design of a high-speed DRAM, and development of the "cellular" server architecture, which is optimized for managing, storing, searching, distributing and mining complex data (such as video, audio and high-resolution images).

Before this, Dr. Dean held several engineering positions at IBM in the area of computer system hardware architecture and design in Boca Raton, Florida, and Austin. His work there on the IAS bus would earn election to the National Inventors Hall of Fame for Dean and colleague Dennis Moeller.

Dean received a B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Tennessee in 1979, an M.S.E.E. degree from Florida Atlantic University in 1982, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1992. He has papers published in the IEEE Computer Society Press, MIT Press, and IBM Research Journal.
 
Dean's awards include: member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and National Academy of Engineering, IEEE Fellow, the CCG Black Engineer of the Year, induction into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, and recipient of the Ronald H. Brown American Innovators Award. Dean was appointed to IBM Fellow in 1995, IBM's highest technical honor, and holds more than 40 patents or patents pending.

Willie A. Deese
President, Merck Manufacturing
Merck & Co., Inc.

In May, 2005 Merck & Co – the global pharmaceutical giant – selected Willie A. Deese as president of its manufacturing division, giving him responsibility for the work of 15,000 employees in 31 plants in 25 countries. He also serves as a member of the firm’s management committee.

The appointment capped a 30-year career in manufacturing and procurement for Deese, who earned his Bachelor’s in business administration from North Carolina A&T State University in 1977 and  M.B.A. from Western New England College in 1983.

Deese joined Merck as senior vice president, Global Procurement, in January 2004, after working as an executive and manager for several pharmaceutical, health care and high technology companies, including GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, PLC; SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, PLC; Kaiser Permanente, and Digital Equipment Corp.  In Deese' career, 24 years have been directly related to supporting, enabling or leading manufacturing operations, including plant management responsibility during his tenure at Digital Equipment Corp.

Cheick Diarra
Chairman
Microsoft Africa

Cheick Diarra, an engineer equally adept at negotiating deep space and cyberspace, heads Microsoft’s efforts to spread computer technology and computer-aided education throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
 
Diarra, a native of Mali, graduated from Pierre & Marie Curie University, Paris, France, and has a Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Howard University, Washington DC.

He worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as interplanetary Navigator on five major missions, and as program manager in the NASA Mars Exploration Program, as well as first CEO of the African Virtual University.

Diarra also spent several years working with non-governmental organizations concerned with African technological development. He is vice president of the UN’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, a member of the Independent Commission on Africa and the Millennium, and the High Level African Panel on Biotechnology, which was created by the African Union and New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

Diarra also serves as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Goodwill Ambassador for Science, Technology and Enterprise, and as founder and president of the African Summit on Science and New Technologies.

W. Roy Dunbar
President - Global Technology and Operations
MasterCard International

For everything else, there is MasterCard. And for MasterCard, everything depends on Roy Dunbar.

As president of MasterCard’s global technology and operations, Dunbar oversees the world’s largest electronic network, moving billions of dollars daily between millions of individuals, and 24 million banks, merchants, and ATMs in 210 countries and territories. It is a seamless network linking a portfolio of MasterCard, Maestro, cirrus, and MasterCard PayPass to handle smooth, international flow of commerce.

Dunbar, who is also a member of the company’s MasterCard Policy and Operating Committees, joined the company in 2004 after spending 14 years with Eli Lilly where, in his last position, he was president of the company's Intercontinental Region, responsible for operations in Africa, the Middle East, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
 
Born in Jamaica and raised in England, Dunbar graduated from Manchester University in the United Kingdom with a degree in pharmacy and later earned his M.B.A. from Manchester Business School.

Anna Everett, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Film and Media Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

For the past two 15 years Anna Everett has explored the nexus between the acquisition and deployment of technology in minority communities, and the public perception of role of minorities in the expanding technological society.
 
The work of Dr. Everett has set an intellectual framework for exploring the significance of the “digital divide” by looking at the application and use of technology in minority communities. In addition, through conferences, writings and workshops, she has fostered exchanges between disparate minority groups – from the hip-hop practitioners, to the engineers and academicians, and community organizers – to learn of the uses of technologies to further their goals.

“As a community,” Everett said, “we have to make this technology work for us in ways other technologies haven’t, since it is so decentralized. That window of opportunity, where we can employ technology to organize and educate and present our own images is not going to be here forever, since the wave of media mergers will clamp down on the freedom of the web.

It is a crucial moment for us in the minority community to harness the technology for our own needs. We have to stake our claim for future generations, since nobody is going to do it for us.”

The popular perception, said Everett, is that blacks are on the wrong side of the digital divide, are latecomers to technology, and uncomfortable with it. “That ignores the fact that the Philadelphia Tribune and the Afro-American Newspapers were online before the New York Times,” she said.

Everett developed the AfroGEEKS: Global Blackness Conferences in conjunction with MIT, and has worked with blacks and other minority groups in Africa, Europe and Australia on the usage of technology for education and political empowerment. Her published analysis range from the use of the internet in developing the Million Woman March, to race and gender in issues in computer games, to The Revolution will be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital Public Sphere.

“The assumption that spending time and resources in minority communities is a waste because they are not capable of using technology, is just not the case,” Everett said.

Monte E. Ford
Senior VP IT and CIO
American Airlines, Inc.

American Airlines, the company that grew out of Charles Lindbergh’s 1926 mail charter company, is now an intercontinental transportation giant which, on a daily basis, handles 329,000 reservations, 293,000 pieces of luggage and coordinates more than 2,600 flights. It is the world’s largest scheduled passenger airline, moving more than 93 million people annually to destinations in the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific.

It is the responsibility of Monte E. Ford to ensure the viability of the IT network serving this global operation. Prior to joining American, Ford held senior management positions with The Associates First Capital Corporation and Bank of Boston. A graduate of Northeastern University, he currently serves on the Research Board and CIO Strategy Exchange.

Dr. Joseph Francisco
President
National Organization for Professional Advancement for Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE)

NOBCChE is the nation’s professional organization dedicated to increasing the number of blacks in the field of chemistry. To that end, the organization has developed extensive partnerships with school districts, municipalities, businesses, industries and other institutions to foster the goal of improving educational opportunities and career development for blacks in chemistry.

Heading the organization is Joseph Francisco, the William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Physical Chemistry at Purdue University. Francisco received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977, and his doctorate from MIT in 1983.

Arthur (Art) L. George
Senior Vice President, High Performance analog
Texas Instruments

Arthur George is a senior vice president of Texas Instruments and manager of the company's High-Performance Analog (HPA) business unit. He was named to this position in April 2006.
 
Prior to his current assignment, George was manager of the High-Performance Linear (HPL) business unit, which is responsible for TI's catalog amplifier and interface integrated circuits. In this role, he held overall responsibility for the business unit’s strategy and operations, including product definition and product development.
 
George joined TI in 1984 as a test engineer working in TI's logic operation, and over the years has held a variety of operational positions, primarily in TI's analog and logic businesses. He was elected a vice president of TI in June 2003.
 
He earned a Bachelor's of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1983 from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a Master's degree in engineering management in 1990 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Linda Gooden
President
Lockheed Martin Information Technology

In 2005 the Federal Aviation Administration was flying blind, and needed a guiding hand in a hurry.

There were more than 600,000 general aviation pilots crisscrossing the skies to thousands of commercial and private landing fields across North America, and monitoring them in increasingly crowded skies was difficult. The pilots would file flight plans through 58 FAA call centers dotting the landscape from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, and these centers would have to provide them with weather data and other information to keep the low level skies safe.
 
But these centers had limited capabilities, and difficulty coordinating with each other. The centers were not integrated, so aircraft were passed from one call center to another as they flew in and out of their area, with regional flight controllers not necessarily knowing the plane’s origin or destination.  The FAA knew the system needed replacing; they just didn’t know how.

Enter Linda Gooden. The founding president of Lockheed Martin Information Technology has a penchant for taking a long view of a project: How did it get to this point? What are its current needs? How will it evolve? What will be needed ten or 20 years from now? In her mind’s eye, the FAA needed a fully integrated network of 20 centers, each carrying a redundant capability, so that any one system would be able to cover a flight from origin to destination anywhere in the nation. The flight plans are automated and, if someone doesn’t close out a flight plan – signaling that the plane arrived at its destination and that flight path is clear for other aircraft – the system generates an alert and notifies the nearest agencies of where to look, where the nearest hospitals and clinics are, and any other assistance law enforcement and rescue crews may need.

It was not surprising that the FAA awarded Gooden’s group the $1.9 billion contract. Under her leadership, Lockheed’s IT division has become the world’s leader in government information technology systems, with 14,000 employees in 70 domestic sites and 18 foreign countries, and more than $2.2 billion in revenues.
 
Gooden’s team has modernized the Social Security system, ensuring that the nation’s elderly receive  their benefits; digitized the FBI’s fingerprint database, so that  literally millions of prints can be searched in minutes by law enforcement agencies across the nation; automated the Navy’s payroll system so all personnel get paid wherever they are in the world; developed the communications infrastructure for the 25,000 employees at the Pentagon; and, in the span of just 18 months, eliminated the mountain of paperwork facing the more than 200,000 inventors seeking patents annually, so their applications and supporting data and diagrams can all be filed electronically through the World Wide Web.

Gooden, the 2006 Black Engineer of the Year, received her degree in computer technology from Youngstown State University, and worked as a software engineer for General Dynamics of San Diego prior to joining Lockheed in 1980.

Kim Goodman
Vice President, S&P CoC
Dell Inc.
 
Dell Inc. is the dominant provider of computers and networks in educational institutions, healthcare, and government agencies. Keeping Dell in that position is the responsibility of Kim Goodman, vice president of sales for Dell’s Americas Public Transactional Group, which markets computer solutions in these areas.

Goodman has held several positions with Dell, the nation’s 25th largest corporation with revenues of nearly $56 billion, and the dominant maker of PCs. In 2004, she was vice president of marketing for the entire Dell Americas Public Sector. From 2001 – 2003 she was vice president and general manager for networking in Dell’s Product Group, where she led product development, engineering, marketing and services. Her team developed and introduced a line of Dell PowerConnect products.

Goodman joined Dell in 2000 as vice president of business development, reporting directly to company CEO Michael Dell.  Prior to joining Dell, Goodman was vice president at Bain & Company, Inc., where she worked with companies in telecommunications, technology, satellite and media industries.

Goodman received Mer master’s of business administration from Harvard Business School. She earned both a Master’s of Sscience in industrial engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in political science at Stanford University.
 
Byron M. Green
VP, Truck and Activity
Vehicle Assembly Manufacturing
DaimlerChrysler Corporation

Byron Green manages six manufacturing plants and 16,000 employees who produce the top line of trucks for DaimlerChrysler Corp. The success of the Jeep line of vehicles – the Grand Cherokee, Liberty, Wrangler and Unlimited – as well as the Dodge Durango, Ram, and Dakota depend on Green’s operational decisions.

Green received his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the General Motors Institute in 1986, and his Master’s degree in engineering management from the University of Detroit – Mercy in 1989.
 
He has had extensive experience in the region’s auto industry, working at various positions with GM and the Ford Motor Company before joining Daimler Chrysler as senor manager, paint operations in 1998. He was appointed to his current post of vice president  truck and activity vehicle assembly operations in August, 2003.

Rodney E. Harrigan
Vice Chancellor for IT and Telecommunications
North Carolina A&T State University

North Carolina A&T State University has long been the nation’s leading producer of black engineers. It is Rodney Harrigan’s charge to ensure that their students – from the Bachelor’s to doctoral level – have the most comprehensive IT infrastructure at their disposal.

He is well suited for that task.  Harrigan, who received his B.S. degree in mathematics from Paine College and an M.S. in computer science from Howard University, spent 25 years in a variety of managerial positions with IBM, where he pioneered systems integration business for commercial customers.  This became IBM’s business prototype and primary revenue source after it transitioned from a product development company to a service company.

Harrigan also taught at several schools – including Bennett, Federal City and Post Colleges, and Winston-Salem and Howard Universities – before coming to North Carolina in 2000.

In his current role, Harrigan is melding five systems – converged networks, pervasive computing, grid computing, storage area networks, and autonomic computing – to provide students with an anytime, anywhere, any device computing environment. Harrigan’s converged networks combine separate voice, video and data network into one consolidated data system. The pervasive computing allows wireless computing anywhere on campus, both inside and outside of buildings. Grid computing consolidates computing power, so that each individual desktop or laptop will have the combined power of all the computers in the grid. Storage is consolidated for fiber-speed access, and autonomic computing makes it possible to monitor and reallocate resources without human intervention.

In addition, Harrigan has created a student-managed company called Student Technical Services, to provide technical support for students, faculty and staff. STS actually hires and trains student employees – and evaluates and fires them if necessary.

David Harris
Snr. VP
Sun Microsystems

As senior vice president of Global Business Services, David M. Harris oversees the development and implementation of Sun Microsystems’ worldwide resource programs.

Harris earned his Bachelors degree in chemical engineering from Howard University and his Masters in real estate development and investment from New York University. He worked in various management roles at Ameritech and Pepsi-Cola before joining Sun in 2000 as senior director of the company’s workplace resources advanced planning group. He was elevated to senior vice president of workplace resources, responsible for management of the firm’s $3 billion global real estate portfolio, prior to his current appointment.

William J. Harvey
VP and General Manager
DuPont Advanced Fiber Systems
and Dupont Personal Protection

William Harvey has spent nearly 40 years in product development at DuPont, the nation’s largest chemical company. Harvey received a Bachelor of Science degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and an M.B.A. from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. He joined DuPont in 1977 as a product specialist in the company’s polymers department.

He worked in a series of product development and management assignments, including global business director for DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers, business director – Kevlar, and vice president and general manager for the firm’s Advanced Fiber and Personal Protection lines.
 
Harvey is a trustee of the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia, and a member of the board of directors of the Salvation Army of Richmond, Va.

Ben-Saba Hasan
Vice President, Corporate and Product Group Information Technology
Dell Inc.

Ben-Saba Hasan  is responsible for much of the information technology infrastructure which keeps Dell the nation’s leading computer maker.
 
In his role as vice president, Corporate and Product Group IT, Hasan directs the development, deployment, operation and support of the IT systems supporting human resources, facilities, legal, environmental health and safety,  the product group, and world-wide financial systems. He also directs the global IT application development and support for Dell’s centers in Shanghai, Taipei, Singapore, and Bangalore.

Prior to joining Dell in 1997, Hasan worked for 14 years at ENSERCH Corp., an oil and gas exploration company based in Dallas, in several managerial positions including IT development and regulatory affairs.

Hasan received a Bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in computer science from Temple University, and a M.B.A. from Amber University in Dallas.

Wyllstyne D. Hill
VP and CIO, Missile Systems
Raytheon Company

Wyllstyne Hill leads a complex IT environment supporting more than 10,000 employees around the globe working on Raytheon’s diverse missile technology projects. She is a member of the company's executive leadership team.

Hill joined Raytheon – then known as Hughes Aircraft Company – in 1971, and held a wide range of positions, including  program control specialist, project engineer, technical manager of engineering evaluation and support, and director of information technology for Raytheon Missile Systems.

Hill earned a Bachelors degree in mathematics and computer science from Tuskegee University in 1971, and has pursued graduate studies in computer science and systems engineering at the University of Arizona.

She is active in several professional and civic organizations working to increase the numbers of women and minorities in the technological workforce, including the Tucson Volunteer Center, Tucson Urban League, Society of Women Engineers, Women in Science and Engineering, National Society of Black Engineers, and Society of Mathematicians, Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA).

Kerrie L. Holley
CTO
IBM Web Services and SOA Center of Excellence

Kerrie Holley is described as "one of the best technical talents" at IBM Corporation. He is the first black employee at the company to be named IBM Distinguished Engineer, and only the second to be elected a member of the firm’s prestigious IBM Academy of Technology.

Receiving the title distinguished engineer is a significant career event, recognizing sustained technical achievement and leadership. Holley, as a distinguished engineer, is part of IBM's executive team, with the responsibility for operational leadership of the technical aspects of unit-wide programs, mentoring, technical community leadership activities, and more. IBM employs 250,000 people worldwide, with fewer than 300 holding this designation.

Holley is recognized by industry and senior technical professionals for insight and technical expertise today, but this spectacular achievement did not come easily. Raised by a single parent on Chicago's tough South Side, he found a place as a teenager and young adult tutoring at the famed Sue Duncan Children's Center, a local program focused on mentoring inner-city children from disadvantaged homes. He went on to earn a B.A. degree in mathematics and a juris doctorate from DePaul University.

As chief architect for the IBM e-Business Integration Unit, he translates business requirements into designs for cutting-edge network solutions for clients.

Milton Hunter, P.E., U.S. Army (Ret.)
Snr. VP, Parsons Infrastructure and Technology
Parsons Corporation
 

Major Gen. Milton Hunter has transitioned from the helm of the nation’s largest, government engineering firms, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to the largest employee-owned engineering and construction form, the Parsons Corp.

Gen. Hunter, who had served as Deputy Commander of the Corps of Engineers, joined Parsons as manager of systems, defense and security, before moving up to his current post as senior vice president of its infrastructure and technology group.

Shirley A. Jackson, Ph. D.
President
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, a theoretical physicist with a long string of "firsts" behind her name, is a driver of engineering development, here and around the world.

In her current role as chief executive of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest technological university in the U.S., she runs an institution with 4,800 undergraduates and 4,300 graduate students pursuing Bachelor's, Master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, management, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences.

She also is on the board of trustees of her alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was their first African American woman to earn a PhD in any discipline. As a theoretical physicist, she went to AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. in 1976, and spent 15 years developing improvements in signal-handling capabilities of semiconductor devices. Her work in solid-state physics helped keep Bell Labs in the forefront of the rapidly advancing field of electronic communications.

Dr. Jackson, who continued her education with summer theoretical courses in Erice, Sicily, and l'Ecole d'ete de Physique Theoretique at Les Houches, France, during the mid-1970s, also served as a lecturer at the Advanced Study Institute run by NATO at Antwerp, Belgium. She lectured at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, in California, and served as a visiting scientist at the Aspen Center for Physics, Aspen, Colo.

A member of MIT's board since 1975, she joined the board of the nation's oldest historically black university, Lincoln University, Pa., in 1980. Five years later, she was on the Executive Committee, where she remained until 1992.

Rutgers University's Board of Trustees also welcomed her membership in 1986, and she moved up, in 1990, to the Board of Governors, serving on the Educational Planning and Policy Committee. In 1993, she joined the board of Associated Universities, Inc., operator of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. She joined the board of the Brookings Institution in June 2000.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Jackson was the first African American to serve as a member of and then head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, governing the operation of the nation’s 103 operating commercial nuclear reactors, and thousands of industrial and medical nuclear facilities. In that capacity, she crisscrossed the nation, reviewing troubled nuclear facilities, and restructuring the agency’s entire regulatory framework.

For her achievements, she was selected the 2001 Black Engineer of the Year.

Anthony R. James
Executive VP; President
Shared Services Group
Southern Company

In 1973, a young Anthony James took his electrical engineering degree from the University of South Florida, and began working as an electrical and instrumentation manager in the newly integrated facilities of Proctor and Gamble. In five years, James moved up through six positions, winning promotions faster than anyone in the history of his division.
 
Then he decided to move to the Southern Company, parent of Savannah Electric. He started in 1978 as safety and health supervisor for a Georgia Power Company plant, and was quickly recognized for what his managers wrote was “his exceptional people skills, positive power of persuasion and determination to excel as an engineer, an innovator, a leader and a mentor.”

James rose through the ranks and, in 1996, was named manager of the Southern Company’s Arkright and Scherer plant, the largest coal-fired power plant in the nation.  His responsibilities were expanded to include a cluster of five major generating facilities and a combustion-turbine peaking plant inside a defense facility. In May, 2001 James was named president and CEO of Savannah Electric, becoming the first black CEO in the city whose fall heralded the end of the Civil War. In 2004 he was named Black Engineer of the Year.

In 2005, James was elevated to his current post of Executive Vice President for the Southern Company and president of its shared services group, overseeing corporate functions and IT to the firm’s utilities in four states, its nuclear generation company, fiber optics and wireless communications businesses, and competitive generation business.

Samuel Jenkins
VP Ethics and Business Conduct
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems

Samuel Jenkins is charged with developing a culture of integrity and ethical business conduct throughout Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. Jenkins joined the aircraft company in 1975, and has held positions in employee relations, equal opportunity programs, and resource management.

He served as vice president, general manager of human resources for Boeing military aircraft and missile systems prior to his current assignment.

Arthur E. Johnson
Snr. VP, Corporate Strategic Development
Lockheed Martin Corporation

Arthur Johnson, who has spent nearly 40 years developing and managing complex technological systems, heads strategic development for Lockheed Martin, a firm whose aeronautics, electronic systems, information & technology services, integrated systems, and space systems bring earn more than $37 billion annually.

Johnson, a graduate of Morehouse College, began his career in 1969 in the federal systems division of IBM as a software engineer. He held a series of increasingly responsible managerial positions at IBM facilities around the country until 1991, when he was appointed executive assistant to John Akers, then chairman of the board of IBM.  He was appointed president and COO of the IBM Federal Systems Company, and a corporate vice president the following year.

In 1994, IBM sold the division to Loral Corp., and Johnson was named group vice president, Loral Federal Systems. Two years later, Loral merged with Lockheed Martin, and Johnson became vice president of Lockheed Martin Corp., and President of Lockheed Martin Federal Systems. In 1997, he was named president and COO of the company’s Information and Services Sector, and in 1998 was named Black Engineer of the Year. He was promoted to his current position the following year.
 

Eddie Bernice Johnson
Congresswoman/ Ranking Dem. Member,
U.S. House of Representatives

Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has spent her entire adult life mixing science and public service.

The eight terms Dallas representative, the ranking member on the House Water Resources and Development and the research subcommittees, received her nursing training at the University of Notre Dame in 1955 and, 20 years later, a Masters in public administration from Southern Methodist University.  In medicine, she was chief psychiatric nurse and psychotherapist in the VA hospital in Dallas at a time when quality medical care for minorities and the poor was not a public priority.

To rectify that need, Johnson ran for and, in 1972, won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, and became chair of its labor committee – the first woman in the state’s history to head a major legislative committee. Five years later, President Jimmy Carter chose her to be regional director of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, a position she held until 1981.

In 1986 she became the first African American since reconstruction to be elected to the state senate, where she pushed for legislation barring hospitals from dumping indigent patients. Closing the gap between white and minority students in science and math were priorities for Johnson, and she pushed for the creation of the Townview Science and Math Magnet School in Dallas. Townview is consistently rated one of the best high schools in the nation, and leads the city in the numbers of students receiving perfect scores on the math portions of the SAT exams.

She came to Congress in 1992, and has pushed for funding for research, particularly money aimed at closing the education gap. She successfully bucked the Bush Administration’s efforts to cut National Science Foundation funding for math and science education.
 
“They have one of the most efficient agencies in terms of doing really good research,” the congresswoman said. “The NSF has conducted most of the education research needed in terms of finding ways to improve achievement levels in science and math among minority children. That is where the future is.

“We have been working hard to close the achievement gap in math and science between white children and minority children. But we have a ways to go.”
 

Sandra K. Johnson, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Staff Member,
CTO, Global Small and Medium Business
IBM Corporation

Dr. Sandra K. Johnson is a pioneer electrical engineer whose biggest successes occur out of the sight of the general public, but rapidly change the way the general public does business. That is because her biggest innovations have profoundly changed the way computers work, especially the large systems that are at the heart of networks changing the way the U.S. and the world communicate, make and record financial transactions, and conduct activities from the mundane to the major-league.

Johnson, a summa cum laude graduate of Southern University with a M.Sc. from Stanford and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Rice University, joined IBM Corporation two decades ago, and was a part of the team that prototyped the Scalable Parallel Processor (SP2), the base machine for the "Deep Blue" chess championship machine. Among her skills was the ability to develop software simulators of computer architectures, permitting intensive evaluation and critiquing of prospective designs.

Johnson, an expert in UNIX and its variants, also became a leader in the Java revolution, leading a technical team examining how well Java servers worked with legacy systems on IBM server platforms. In 2000, she became manager of the WebSphere Database Development Department, leading the development and delivery of WebSphere integration features into the DB2 database system, and VisualAge for Java, helping IBM drive its "seamless computing" initiative in the business-systems market.

In 2003,  Johnson moved over to Linux, as IBM Linux Technology Center performance architect. There, she worked with IBM server brands and middleware teams to address common Linux performance issues, help resolve them in hardware design, work with the Linux distribution partner liaisons, and advocate for quality Linux performance in the "Open Source" community.

Johnson has 17 patents or patents pending, and in 2002 was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology, the first black woman to be so honored.

Lester  L. Lyles, USAF (Ret.)
President & CEO
The Lyles Group

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the dawning of an era of terrorism, the knowledge of security and defense strategies has become increasingly important to technology companies, particularly those who operate on a multinational level.

Gen. Lester Lyles is filling that gap, providing consulting services on security strategies to corporate clients. He retired from the position of Commander, Air Force Materiel Command at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where he was responsible for developing and testing the Air force arsenal and the logistical support for air bases around the world.

Gen. Lyles retired after nearly 40 years with the Air Force, which he joined in 1968 as a young second lieutenant and graduate of the Air Force ROTC program at Howard University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. During his career, he has served as commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base; director of Ballistic Missile Defense Organization within the Department of Defense; and vice chief of staff of the Air Force.

Frank L. Miller Jr. (U.S. Army, Ret.)
VP, Dell Americas
Manufacturing Fulfillment Operations
Dell Inc.

Major General Frank Miller spent 32 years in various command and strategic planning positions in the U.S. Army, before starting a second career in 1996 with Dell as vice president and general manager for the Federal Civilian sales team, and vice president of the firm’s custom factory integration business.

In his current role, Gen. Miller is responsible for managing fulfillment centers in Tennessee, Nevada and Texas, as well as Latin America and Canada. Gen. Miller earned his Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Washington, and a Master’s in systems management from Troy State University.

Gregory B. Morrison
VP and CIO
Cox Enterprises, Inc.

Information technology systems are the key drivers of today’s media corporations. Their ability to gather and disseminate news, assess and reach advertisers, conduct consumer surveys and tap the cyberspace to gather information determine how successfully the company can compete in the modern data landscape.

Cox Enterprises, a $12 billion media conglomerate with newspapers, radio and television stations, and an electronic auto-trader with facilities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and Poland rely on Gregory Morrison to ensure the quality and expand the capabilities of its IT network.

Morrison, who was named vice president and chief information officer in 2002, is responsible for technology planning for all corporate headquarters operations. He previously served as vice president of information systems at Prudential Financial, Inc., where he progressed through the ranks from 1989 to 2000. He briefly left Prudential to become chief operating officer and chief information officer for RealEstate.com in 2000, then rejoined the company later that year as vice president of information systems. Prior to joining Prudential, Morrison served in the United States Army Signal Corps for seven years.

Morrison serves on the board of trustees for Clark Atlanta University, and on the board of directors for both TechBridge and the Georgia CIO Leadership Association

James R. Nanton
CIO
Sara Lee Branded Apparel

James Nanton has spent more than 30 years developing and managing information systems in banking and manufacturing.
 
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from Iona College and a Master’s in management of technology from the Polytechnic University of New York. He was systems vice president at Citigroup in New York prior to joining Sare Lee Branded Apparel in 1993.

Nanton serves on the board of the Hospice Foundation, and the International Affairs Advisory Board of Winston-Salem State University.

Gen. Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton (U.S. Air Force, Ret.)
Executive VP
Pratt and Whitney

Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines, industrial gas turbines and space propulsion systems.

The jet engines produced by the $9 billion company are found in 30 of the world’s air forces and 9,000 regional airlines, and power corporate jets, the Boeing 747 and Airbus 330, the F22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the Space Shuttle, which needs four million pounds of thrust to reach orbit.

It was not surprising when, in 2000, the company reached out to entice four-star Air Force General Lloyd Newton, who was retiring after a 34-year military career, to join the firm as vice president of international military programs and business development. His charter in strategic planning was expanded with his promotion to executive vice president.

It is a subject he knows well: As Commander of the U.S. Air Education and Training command, Gen. Newton was responsible for recruiting and training all Air force personnel, and supervision of 13 air bases with more than 43,000 active duty members and 14,000 civilians.

Gen. Newton earned a Bachelor’s degree in aviation education from Tennessee State University, where he was commissioned as a distinguished graduate through the ROTC in 1966.

He completed pilot training and then flew 269 combat missions from Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam, including 79 missions over North Vietnam. He was selected in 1974 to join the Thunderbirds, the Air Force precision demonstration squadron. Gen. Newton has more than 4,000 flight hours in such aircraft as the F-15, F-16 and F117 stealth fighter. Newton also served as vice chief of staff at Air Force headquarters.

Rodney O'Neal
President and CEO
Delphi Corporation

Rodney O’Neal is the leader of the world’s largest supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, and controls and security systems, electrical/electronic architecture, and in-car entertainment technologies produced at 159 manufacturing sites in 34 countries.  Delphi, a diversified technology company with 172,000 employees and revenues of nearly $27 billion, is also involved in computing, communications, consumer electronics, energy and medical applications.

In a real sense, Delphi and O’Neal grew up together in the auto industry. O’Neal started his automotive career in 1971 as a student at the General Motors Technical Institute. The program calls for students to study for six months, and then work in some aspect of auto manufacturing for six months in a cooperative education program. Upon graduation, O’Neal began working in the Inland Division, a precursor of Delphi, in his hometown of Dayton.

There followed a succession of assignments in Portugal, Canada, and the U.S. Along the way, O’Neal earned a M.B.A. at Stanford under a G.M. Sloan Fellowship. When he got back to Detroit, O'Neal helped put together the General Motors Black Executive Forum, which gave African Americans in management a place to sound off, to get help and guidance in the rarefied air of the corporate executive suite, and to hone their skills for the intensely competitive corporate environment.

O’Neal became general manager of Delphi Interior and Lighting Systems, and led the divestiture of its $1.2 billion seating business. GM subsequently spun Delphi off as an independent company, and O’Neal was a member of the Delphi Strategy Board as it went through its IPO. He then expanded the newly independent company’s reach to supply parts to Ford Motor Co and other car manufacturers.

William Osborne
Director of Engineering
General Dynamics

Col. William Osborne retired after a 25-year career with the U.S. air force to become director of engineering, manufacturing, and network systems for the General Dynamics Corp. in 1999.

Osborne received a Bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1975, and held a variety of command and staff officer positions. Prior to joining General Dynamics, Osborne was deputy director of the Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office, a newly-created organization responsible for transitioning the Department of Defense contracting and financial activities to a paperless, electronic environment.

Marcia Page
President and CEO
Foundation for Community Empowerment

Marcia Page joined the Foundation for Community Empowerment in February, 2005, as a loaned executive from Texas Instruments. She stayed, and as FCE’s President and CEO – a post she assumed in September 2006 – Page is responsible for the Foundation's strategic direction and the alignment of its core initiatives: community building, institutional and systemic change, and research. Before stepping into the CEO role, she spearheaded the highly successful Dallas Achieves school reform pilot project on 26 Dallas Independent School District campuses in South and West Dallas.
 

Page joined Texas Instruments in 1995 as director of business excellence in the Semiconductor Group. Since then she has served as director of worldwide customer support, manager and then vice president for worldwide eMarketing, and vice president of marketing in the Educational & Productivity Solutions business.
 
Page received her Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska, Omaha and has completed executive education programs at Harvard University and the University of Indiana.

She is an active member in business and community organizations, including the National Society of Black Engineers and the Executive Women’s Roundtable with the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, and a board member of the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.
 
Page was awarded the 1997 Women of Color technology Award in the category of Business Innovation. Texas Instruments recently honored her by endowing a scholarship in her name, the Texas Instruments Marcia Page Scholarship for African American Females demonstrating excellence in Mathematics, Engineering and Technology.  This honor was in recognition of the outstanding role mode she serves for underrepresented females pursuing technology careers. 
 

Colin J. Parris
Development VP
Systems and Technology Group
IBM

Colin Parris has held several key management and research posts at IBM, most recently as corporate vice president of technology, responsible for ensuring the development of hardware, software, and electronics technology required by IBM business units worldwide.

He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley; a M.Sc. in management from Stanford University; a M.Sc. in computer science from Berkeley; and a B.S.E.E. from Howard University. Dr. Parris won the Black Engineer of the Year Deans' Award in 1998.

Vallerie Parrish-Porter
CIO, Sr. VP
Embarq Corporation

Vallerie Parrish-Porter is responsible for the strategic and tactical deployment and operations of IT infrastructure resources for Embarq Corp., the largest independent, local exchange carrier in the nation.

Embarq, a Fortune 500 company, had revenues exceeding $6 billion and 20,000 employees operating in 18 states, offering voice, data, high speed internet, wireless and entertainment services to more than five million customers.

Prior to her appointment with Embarq, Parrish-Porter was vice president – enterprise services, for Sprint, and led the technology integration for the Sprint-Nextel merger.

Parrish-Porter earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Southern University, and a M.B.A. from the University of Miami.

Richard Parsons
Chairman and CEO
Time Warner

Richard D. Parsons is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Time Warner Inc., whose businesses include filmed entertainment, interactive services, television networks, cable systems and publishing. He became CEO in May 2002, and Chairman of the Board in May 2003.
 
In that capacity, Parsons heads the world’s largest media and entertainment company, whose divisions include AOL, Time Inc., Time Warner Cable, Home Box Office, New Line Cinema, Turner Broadcasting System, and Warner Brothers Entertainment.

In its January 2005 report on America’s Best CEOs, Institutional Investor magazine named Mr. Parsons the top CEO in the entertainment industry. Before becoming CEO, Parsons served as the company's Co-Chief Operating Officer, overseeing its content businesses-Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, Warner Music Group and Time Warner Book Group-as well as two key corporate functions: Legal and People Development.

Parsons joined Time Warner as its President in February 1995, and has been a member of the company's Board of Directors since January 1991. As President, he oversaw the company's filmed entertainment and music businesses, and all corporate staff functions, including financial activities, legal affairs, public affairs and administration.
 
Before joining Time Warner, Parsons was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dime Bancorp, Inc., one of the largest thrift institutions in the United States. Previously, he was the managing partner of the New York law firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. Prior to that, he held various positions in state and federal government, as counsel for Nelson Rockefeller, and as a senior White House aide under President Gerald Ford.

Parsons received his undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii and his legal training at Union University's Albany Law School. His civic and non-profit commitments include Co-Chairman of the Mayor’s Commission on Economic Opportunity in New York; Chairman of the Apollo Theatre Foundation, and service on the boards of Howard University, the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History.

Philip Paulwell
Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology
Government of Jamaica

Philip Paulwell has served the government of Jamaica as Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology since 2002, and led the drive to liberalize his country’s telecommunications sector and promote information technology as an engine of growth and development.

That effort meant breaking the 25-year telecommunications monopoly, and opening up the nation’s information sector to competition. Paulwell is past president of the Caribbean Telecommunication Union, and out-going chair of the Special Committee on Science, Technology, Health, Education and Culture of the Association of Caribbean States.

Paulwell graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1987 with an Honours Law Degree, and served for three years as legal officer of the Jamaica Commodity Trading company, Ltd. In 1993 he became the first Executive Director of the newly established Fair Trading Commission.

George D. Peterson, Ph.D., P.E
Executive Director
ABET, Inc.

Dr. George Peterson is an educator's educator, with decades of service preparing technical professionals.
 
He is the recipient of a 1999 Black Engineer of the Year Award for Promotion of Higher Education, and a 1990 Meritorious Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Dr. Peterson is known across the U.S. as the face and voice of ABET, the standard-setter for technology education in America formerly known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

Peterson's career includes time as chair of electrical engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy, professor and assistant vice president for academic affairs at Morgan State University, and head of undergraduate faculty and teacher development for the National Science Foundation. He also was a tenured faculty member at the Air Force Academy, and chair of the department of electrical engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Peterson, a North Carolina A&T State University electrical engineering graduate and former Air Force officer (1966-1988), received his masters in electrical engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and earned his doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois.
 
He has been active in the American Society of Engineering Education, the I.E.E.E., the American Society of Association Executives, the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives, and the U.S. Council for International Engineering Practice. He chairs the Specialized and Professional Advisory Panel of the Council of Education

Charles E. Phillips, Jr.
President
Oracle Corporation

Charles Phillips has served as President of Oracle Corp, and been a member of the board of Directors since January, 2004.
 
He joined the company in 2003 as executive vice president of strategy, partnerships and business development. Prior to joining Oracle, Phillips was a managing director of Morgan Stanley & Co., the global investment bank.

Phillips holds a BS in computer science from the United States Air Force Academy, and M.B.A. from Hampton University, and a J.D. from New York Law School, and is a member of the Washington, D.C. and Georgia bar.

Thomas S. Sayles
VP, Governmental and Community Affairs
Sempra Energy

Thomas Sayles is responsible for  public policy planning and analysis, government relations; corporate contributions, and community relations for Sempra Energy,  an energy services holding company providing electricity, natural gas, and related services to more than 29-million customers in the U.S., Europe, Canada, South America and Asia.

Prior to joining Sempra, Sayles was vice president of public affairs for Pacific Enterprises, the parent company of Southern California Gas Co, from 1996 to 1998. Before entering the corporate arena, he served as California commissioner of corporations and California secretary of business, transportation and housing. He also served as deputy attorney general and an assistant U.S. attorney.

Sayles has a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Robert L. Shepard, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Science and Engineering Alliance, Inc. (SEA)

In the early days of harnessing nuclear power for commercial and military use, Robert Shepard took his newly minted Howard University doctorate in organic chemistry, and joined the relatively young organization called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was responsible for developing systems to counting atoms in a system which assembled commercial and weapons grade uranium, one molecule at a time.

“The fabricating facilities,” Shepard said, “were all going from uranium hexafluoride to uranium oxide, and we had to be concerned about this highly strategic material. How do you make sure that what goes into the process comes out at the back end?”

It was Shepard’s systems which improved security for nuclear resources throughout the country, and in 1980 he represented the NRC by presenting a paper on the subject at an international symposium in Scotland.
 
“Here I was,” he recalled, “on an official passport, coming out of the tobacco fields of North Carolina. I was wondering if it was real.”

In 1984 he became the NRC’s first loaned executive, spending four years at Howard University applying technology to solving food shortage problems in Africa and other developing nations, by ascertaining the nutritional properties of lesser know plants. Shepard, who was the highest ranking black scientist at the NRC, then persuaded the Department of Education and the NRC to work with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to strengthen their research opportunities and capabilities.

That led to his forming the Science and Engineering Alliance (SEA) between the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Alabama A&M, Prairie View, Southern, and Jackson State Universities. While SEA consists of those four schools, other HBCUs are brought into the mix for specific research projects.  A federally funded SEA grant to study the impact of climate change on the gulf coast included researchers from Mississippi State, and Florida A&M.

In the ensuing 15 years, SEA has provided scholarships, summer jobs, and graduate appointments to hundreds of minority students interested in careers in high level scientific research.

Dr. Ruth Simmons
President of Brown University

Ruth J. Simmons was sworn in as the 18th president of Brown University on July 3, 2001. She also holds an appointment as professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Department of Africana Studies. She was president of Smith College from 1995 until the time of her appointment at Brown.

 A native of Texas, and a 1967 graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans, Simmons received her Ph.D. in Romance languages and literature from Harvard University in 1973. She is fluent in French, and has written on the works of David Diop and Aime Cesaire.

She served in various administrative roles at the University of Southern California, Princeton University, and Spelman College, before becoming president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the United States. At Smith, she launched a number of initiatives, including an engineering program, the first at an American women’s college.

Simmons is the recipient of many honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship, the 2001 President’s Award from the United Negro College Fund, the 2002 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, and the 2004 Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal. She has been a featured speaker in many public venues, including the White House, the World Economic Forum, the National Press Club, the American Council on Education, and the Phi Beta Kappa Lecture at Harvard University. She serves on a number of boards, including Pfizer Inc., Texas Instruments, and The Goldman Sachs Group, and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees.

John Brooks Slaughter, Ph.D., P.E.
President and CEO
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc.

Dr. John Slaughter, scientist and educator, heads the largest organization dedicated to increasing the representation of African American, American Indian, and Latino men and women pursuing education and careers in engineering and technology, mathematics and science.

Slaughter, a former director of the National Science Foundation, president of Occidental College in Los Angeles, and chancellor at the University of Maryland, College Park, has a long and distinguished background as a leader in the education, engineering and scientific communities.
 
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, where he has served on the Committee on Minorities in Engineering, chaired its Action Forum on Engineering Workforce Diversity, and is a current member of the NAE Council.
 
Slaughter is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Society. In 1993, he was named to the American Society for Engineering Education Hall of Fame, and in 2001, was named an Eminent Member of the Eta Kappa Nu Society, the honorary society of electrical engineering.
 
Slaughter began his professional career as an electronics engineer at General Dynamics. He has been director of the Applied Physics Laboratory, and professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington; academic vice president and provost at Washington State University; and most recently, The Irving R. Melbo Professor of Leadership in Education at the University of Southern California. He has served as president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering since August 2000, and serves on the board of directors at Northrop Grumman and Solutia, Inc.

Slaughter earned a Ph.D. in engineering science from the University of California, San Diego; a M.S. in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Kansas State University. He holds honorary degrees from more than 25 institutions. Dr. Slaughter was also honored with the first "U.S. Black Engineer of the Year" award in 1987.

William D. Smith, P.E.
President
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc.

William D. Smith is leader of the 120-year-old Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas engineering consulting firm, an operating company with 3,000 staffers handling 1,700 projects around the world ranging in size from $50,000 to $14 billion, earning $680 million in annual revenues. 
 

Smith, a 1965 graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, began his career as an Air Force officer, supervising the installation and maintenance of navigation aids, communications gear, and military air traffic control systems throughout the Far East.  After returning to civilian life, Smith worked for Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. and then Bechtel Corporation, flying over oceans and continents to complete a wide variety of assignments, from mining projects in Indonesia to rock quarry operations in California. At Bechtel, Smith became a member of the Directors' Advisory Group, a select group of senior-manager candidates who advised top executives on strategic issues. Smith also was part of the team that established a Chinese-American subsidiary on the Asian mainland. As if that were not enough, while at Bechtel he also completed a Master's degree in management at the University of the Redlands.

One of the first Black American engineers his overseas mining colleagues ever saw, he showed off cultural intelligence as well as technical skills. In Latin America, he mastered Spanish and learned the cultural mores, developing effective methods to break subject-area isolation, motivating teams to share information to complete shared project goals.

In 1988, Smith moved over to Parsons Brinckerhoff as chief engineer of the recently acquired FMC Power Group, working on projects at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of California at Davis, and Beale Air Force Base; and was chief electrical and mechanical engineer for the Superconducting Super Collider project at Waxahachie, Texas.

Smith was promoted to his present position in 2003.

Paula Sneed
Executive VP,
Global Marketing Resources & Initiatives
Kraft Foods, Inc.

Paula A. Sneed has served as executive vice president, global marketing resources and initiatives for Kraft Foods Inc. since June 2005.  She is responsible for worldwide leadership and oversight of marketing resources functions, including consumer insights and strategy, media, advertising, digital and consumer relationship marketing, packaging and brand design, consumer promotions, marketing alliances, kitchens, consumer relations, and other marketing disciplines for more than 100 major food brands.
 
Sneed joined General Foods (which later merged with Kraft Foods) in 1977 as assistant product manager. Since then, she has held a number of high-ranking positions within Kraft, ranging from senior vice president of Kraft's North American food service division to executive vice president of the desserts division.
 
In her current role, Sneed has been instrumental in developing Kraft's efforts in the areas of consumer relationship marketing (CRM), digital marketing, consumer insights, media services, packaging, multi-cultural marketing, and advertising.
 
Under Sneed's leadership, kraftfoods.com has become the number-one rated CPG Web site in consumer satisfaction. The company's "recipes by e-mail" program also has a number-one ranking among CPG companies, and Inside Research recently identified the Kraft Consumer Insights Group as the top research company among its peers.
 
Sneed earned her B.A. from Simmons College, and her M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. 

Lauren C. States
VP SWG Technical Sales Enablement
IBM

Lauren States is responsible for IBM’s technical sales support and customer software deployment across the company’s $16 billion software business. She provides direction to IBM’s 11,000-member field sales and technical sales support teams around the world.  She also directs a 4,200-member technical sales organization, comprised of software architects and product specialists who consult with clients and business partners worldwide to design software solutions.

States joined IBM in 1978 as a systems engineer in New York City, and has since managed teams of both sales and technical professionals covering a broad array of industries.  She joined IBM’s client/server team in 1991 with the responsibility for developing new markets, and later led IBM’s Midwest sales territory, delivering e-business solutions to large and small businesses. She assumed her current role in 2000, and grew the technical team from 2,100 to 4,200 professionals.
 
States graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School with a Bachelor of Science degree. She and her husband, Kenneth Creary, serve as IBM co-chairs of National Black Family Technology Awareness Week.

Ainsley A. Stewart Jr.
National Chairperson
National Society of Black Engineers

Ainsley Stewart is a 22-year-old electrical engineering student at Polytechnic University. In his elected role as the NSBE National Chairperson, Stewart leads the organization’s national executive board, and oversees all of NSBE’s domestic and international operations.

Stewart has previously served the organization as a chapter president, regional chair, and national parliamentarian. He is a winner of the U.S. Collegiate Engineering Award, and a National Dean’s List honoree.

Nancy Stewart
Snr. VP & CTO
Wal-Mart Inc.

As chief technology officer for the world’s largest retail company, Nancy Stewart harnesses computer power to manage the firm’s massive inventory control, accounting, personnel management, and progress reporting.

Stewart joined Wal-Mart after an extensive career in information management.  Stewart graduated from Illinois' Dominican University with a Bachelor's degree in math and joined IBM in 1970 as a systems programmer for MVT VSAM systems. In four years, she jumped to systems engineer, supporting the General Motors research center in Warren, MI. There, she led installation of more than 50 large System 370 computer systems.

In 1987, Stewart completed a Sloan Fellowship in management at MIT. Then she took over as top executive, managing 1,000 people at IBM's Endicott Glendale Laboratory. Her R&D team developed the hardware and software for the market-leading 4381 computer system. In 1991, Stewart became the lead IBM executive in a joint GM/EDS project. That year, IBM made Stewart its first ever black female vice president.

Stewart moved to General Motors Corp as the business services information officer for three years, before taking her present position with Wal-Mart in 2004.

Hugh Taylor
President, Commercial State & Local Groups
Northrop Grumman Information Technology

As president of Northrop Grumman’s Information Technology group, Hugh Taylor is responsible for developing and maintaining the infrastructure for the firm’s federal, commercial, state and local customers.

Taylor’s IT organization operates throughout the U.S. and Britain. Taylor joined Grumman Corp. in 1983, and became manager of accounting for Grumman Systems Support in 1987. He was promoted to director of accounting in 1990, and assumed responsibility for all planning and budgeting functions.
 
Taylor has a Bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marist College.

Lydia W. Thomas, Ph.D.
President and CEO; Member, Board of Trustees
Mitretek Systems, Inc.

Lydia Thomas, the 2003 Black Engineer of the Year, began her college career at Howard University, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1965, and went on to earn a Master’s  in microbiology from American University in 1971. She returned to Howard in 1973, to earn a Ph.D. in cell biology, just in time to join the emerging technology revolution.

She joined the MITRE Corp. and its Mitretek Systems division in the early 1970s, where she shaped trailblazing programs in the areas of energy, environmental safety, public safety, toxicology, health, and national security.  In 1996 Mitretek Systems spun off from MITRE to concentrate its non-defense technology business, and Thomas was chosen to be the new company’s president and CEO.

In 2002 she was asked by President Bush to serve as a member of his Homeland Security Advisory Council.  She is a trustee of George Washington University, and a member of the Northern Virginia Healthcare Workforce Alliance with the Northern Virginia Community College. She co-chaired the R&D Investment Panel for a Defense Science Board Summer Study on Defense Technology, served a three-year term on the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Defense Department’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, and two terms on the Environmental Advisory Board to the chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

John W. Thompson
Chairman of the Board & CEO
Symantec Corporation

John Thompson makes the world’s computers and information technology systems safe.

Under Thompson’s leadership, Symantec has grown from a small, consumer software publisher to the market leader for IT security solutions, with more than 17,000 employees in 40 countries. Prior to joining Symantec, Thompson was a senior executive with IBM Corp. In his last assignment, Thompson was general manager of IBM Americas and a member of the company’s worldwide management council.

Thelma B. Thompson, Ph.D.
President
University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Thelma Thompson is the 13th president of the University of Maryland – Eastern Shore, an 1890 land grant college which is a world-class research institution and the only state-supported research and doctoral-granting college in that region of Maryland.
 
Thompson earned Bachelor’s, Master’s, and doctoral degrees  from Howard University, as well as a teacher’s diploma from Bethlehem Teachers College in Jamaica.  She served four years at Norfolk State University as vice president for academic affairs, managing a budget of $40 million. Prior to that, she taught at the University of the District of Columbia, Bowie State University, Howard University, and the City University of New York.

Don Thompson
President
McDonald’s Corporation

At first glance, it might seem strange that an electrical engineer out of Purdue University would be involved with a fast food franchise. But the modern day McDonald’s Corporation, a far flung enterprise serving 28 million customers daily from nearly 14,000 restaurants, would not be fast if it were not for its IT infrastructure.

In reality, McDonalds is a series of interlinked information networks operating like those of banking systems, with its thousands of restaurants serving as ATMs for the stomach. Each individual order generates a real time inventory report – including the number of pieces of lettuce or quantity of ketchup – available to regional and corporate managers and automatically aggregates and dispenses restocking orders from the regional warehouses.

Thompson began his career with McDonald’s in 1990 as a restaurant systems engineer, and held a series of leadership positions. He has served as executive vice president for the firm’s restaurant solutions group, and president of McDonald’s West Division.

Lloyd G. Trotter
President & CEO
GE Consumer and Industrial

Lloyd Trotter is vice chairman of GE, and president and CEO of GE Industrial, a $35 billion business segment which includes plastics, advanced materials, inspection technologies, security, and Consumer and Industrial – which includes major appliance and lighting products.

Prior to this appointment, Trotter was executive vice president operations, where he was responsible for leading efforts to lower structural costs and improve operations across GE’s varied business lines.
 
Trotter began his GE career in 1970 as a field service engineer with GE Lighting. He subsequently held production and technology positions of increasing responsibility in GE's Lighting, Gas Turbine, Appliances and Electrical Distribution & Control (ED&C) businesses. He was elected to the position of Vice President and General Manager of Manufacturing for ED&C in 1990. In that role, he was responsible for the entire manufacturing process, and for the integration of 40 production facilities throughout the world. In 1992, he became President and Chief Executive Officer of ED&C. He was named a GE Senior Vice President, and the President and Chief Executive Officer of the new Industrial Systems business in 1998, when ED&C merged with GE Industrial Controls Systems.

Trotter is a founding member of GE's African American Forum, and is actively involved in numerous professional and community organizations. He represents GE for America's Promise, an organization whose aim is to increase volunteerism in support of youth, founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is on the boards of the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME), and the GE Foundation. Trotter graduated from Cleveland State University with a Bachelor's degree in business administration in 1972.
 

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D.
Frederick P. Rose Director
 Hayden Planetarium Astrophysicist
American Museum of Natural History

To a young Neil deGrasse Tyson, there was always something magical about the Hayden Planetarium in New York’s American Museum of Natural History. The night sky is lost in the glare of lights over the New York City region, and the kid from the Bronx could only see the true heavens when he went to the Planetarium.

“I went there the first time at age nine on a family trip,” he recalled. “The Hayden Planetarium was an authentic replica of the night sky, and it was a magical moment when the lights dim and the stars come out. It was a cosmic Mecca. Everyone there was interested in the subject I wanted to give my life to.

“And I feel like I didn’t choose the universe, the universe chose me. It’s a calling.”

It was a calling he took to eagerly. His parents gave him telescope when he was 12, “It was good enough to see the craters on the moon and sun spots,” he said. “But by age 14 he was walking dogs in the Bronx to raise money for a bigger one, and taking classes in the afternoons and weekends at the Planetarium.

From that start, Tyson would become one of the world’s foremost astrophysicists and head of one of its most prominent planetariums – the one which nurtured his interest as a youth.

Tyson attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, and went on to earn his B.A. in physics from Harvard and his Ph.D. in astrophysics from Columbia University in 1991. Three years later, while conducting post-doctoral research at Princeton into the structure of the Milky Way, the 34-year-old was contacted by trustees of the Museum and asked about possible future directions for the Planetarium.

“I was not alone among those being approached,” he said. “But I spoke with love and passion for the place.  It had helped establish the transition from being an amateur astronomer as a kid, and where I would land as a scientist.

“I gave credit for that to the efforts of the scientists and educators at the Planetarium during my formative years, and I have this deep obligation to serve others in the next generation the way they served me.”

Tyson, at the time, only the 10th black out of 2,000 astrophysicists in the world, would become the driving force behind the Hayden Planetarium. In that role, he has put a black face of the nation’s view of astrophysics. Tyson was host of the 2004 PBS NOVA mini-series Origins, and hosts its spinoff program NOVA Science Now. He is also author of seven books, including Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, and the autobiographical The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist.

Most recently, Tyson was the most prominent proponent of reclassifying the solar system to scrap the count of nine planets and, instead, lump Pluto with other icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt. The Planetarium’s new exhibit, in 2000, divided the solar system into three categories – a view which was criticized originally, but has now been officially adopted by the world’s astrological societies.

“The gas giants – Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter and Saturn – are all big, low density, gaseous, and have rings and many moons,” Tyson explained. “They have more in common with each other than they do with anything else in the solar system. The terrestrials – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – are small, rocky, and dense.

“That left the asteroid belt with Pluto and thousands of other small objects that were icy, with elongated orbits. It was interpreted that we were kicking Pluto out of the solar system, and I played along with them, saying Pluto was too small to make it in New York. But that isn’t what drove the decision.”
 

Edward T. Welburn Jr.
VP, Global Design
General Motors Corporation

Three decades ago, an 11-year-old kid from Berwyn, Pa. wrote a letter to General Motors saying he was interested in auto design and wanted advice on what kinds of high school courses to take, and what college he should go to.

To the surprise of Ed Welburn, a GM executive wrote back with detailed instructions – which Welburn followed. That advice included going to Howard University, where Welburn specialized in sculpture and structured a program geared towards transportation design. That was in 1968, and he has been climbing GM’s creative ladder ever since.

In 2003, General Motors Chief Executive Rich Wagoner gave Welburn control of all the firm’s sculpting knives and crayons – making him Vice President for Design, and putting him in charge of all of GM’s 11 design studios worldwide. In the process, Welburn became the highest ranking black executive in the auto industry. In 2005, he was elevated to vice president – global design, which brought GM’s trucks under his creative purview as well.

The appointment came at a time when GM was hemorrhaging money, culminating in a loss billions of dollars. More importantly, GM lost market share to Toyota, which is already the second largest company in the American auto marketplace. If GM is to regain its fiscal stability and market dominance, then it is up to Welburn and his design empire to create the vehicles which will attract American motorists.

He has already made a mark, restructuring the sturdy but dull Saturn line, and giving a whole new look and performance level to Cadillac, and his imprint is being seen in the latest cars in the Chevy and Pontiac lines.

Welburn serves as GM’s key executive to Howard University, and serves on the board of governors at the Cranbrook Institute of Science.

Dwayne A. Wilson
Snr. VP & General Manager
Fluor Corporation

For nearly a century, the Fluor Corp. has been synonymous with state of the art construction technology and management as the world’s largest publicly owned engineering firm.

It has pioneered oil and gas field construction from the industry’s earliest days in the American Southwest to modern offshore drilling and refining facilities and pipelines crossing the 500,000 square mile Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Fluor built facilities for America’s nuclear development a half century ago, and also handles the country’s nuclear environmental cleanup. Fluor’s mining projects span the globe, while its life sciences group builds biomedical facilities for genetic and pharmaceutical research.

For the past 26 years, Dwayne Wilson has been an integral part of the Fluor story, working on and leading engineering projects around the globe. As senior vice president and general manager, Wilson heads Fluor’s worldwide mining operations, with more than 1,000 engineers and 25,000 construction workers. It is a position in which he spends three quarters of his time on the road.

“I’m now responsible for projects pretty much around the world,” Wilson said. “We have mining programs in Spain, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, North America, and in Outer Mongolia in the Gobi Desert.”

The latter is the world’s largest desert, some of it sand and some of it hard rock, with temperature fluctuations from -400 to 1130 in the summer. “Many of the places I visit now are never on the beaten track for tourists,” said Wilson. “But they are interesting, and you get a chance to interact with indigenous people. We donate time and build schools and classrooms, and find that very rewarding.”

Wilson grew up with an urge to be a builder. “Dad was in construction in Southern California,” he said, “so civil engineering became a natural for me. It’s exciting if you like to see things actually being built.”

He received a degree in civil engineering from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1980 and joined Fluor, working on increasingly complex and diverse assignments. These included designing an offshore Alaskan drilling, oil and gas production facility capable of processing 150 million barrels daily; construction management of gas pipelines in the United Arab Emirates; managing Fluor’s $500 million life sciences division involving food and beverage, pulp and paper facilities in North America, Europe and Asia; and president of Fluor’s commercial and institutional business division.

In his current post, Wilson also serves as a trustee of the Fluor Foundation, and is past chairman of the Engineering and Construction Contracting Association.

To read more about Most Important Blacks in Technology for 2007 see Most Important Blacks in Technology for 2007 in the USBE News archive.