Annual National Convention Speakers

 

Moderator for the Public Forum- Tuesday, June 16th

   


Soledad O’Brien

Biography



Soledad O’Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN/U.S. Since joining the network in 2003, O’Brien has reported breaking news from around the globe and has produced award-winning and record-breaking documentaries on the most important stories facing the world today. She also covers political news as part of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television.”

O’Brien’s most recent projects include CNN Presents: Black in America, a groundbreaking initiative that focused on the state of Black America 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She reported and anchored a CNN documentary featuring a never-before-seen look at King’s private writings and notes in Words That Changed a Nation and investigated his assassination in Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination. Her initiative Children of the Storm and documentary One Crime at a Time demonstrate O’Brien’s continued commitment to covering stories out of New Orleans.

In addition, she has provided live breaking news coverage from around the world. For CNN’s Katrina coverage, O’Brien’s reports on the hurricane’s impact included an in-depth interview with former FEMA chief Michael Brown. She also covered the London terrorism attacks in July 2005, and in December 2004, she was among a handful of CNN anchors sent to Thailand to cover the disaster and aftermath of the tsunami.

O'Brien was part of the coverage teams that earned CNN a George Foster Peabody award for its Katrina coverage and an Alfred I. duPont Award for its coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. Her numerous other awards include a Gracie Allen Award in 2007 for her reporting from Cyprus on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict as well as her reports from the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The NAACP honored her with its President’s Award in 2007 for her humanitarian efforts and journalistic excellence.

In 2008, O’Brien was the first recipient of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Goodermote Humanitarian Award for her efforts while reporting on the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asia tsunami.

O’Brien is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She is a graduate of Harvard University.

December 2008

Speaker for the Scholarship Luncheon - Friday, June 19th


Janice Bryant Howroyd

Biography

Janice Bryant Howroyd practices what she preaches. With a lot of hard work and even more perseverance, Janice turned her passion for helping others into an admirable and highly successful enterprise—all the while mentoring others and championing work/life balance along the way.

Janice is a strong advocate for Women Owned Businesses, Diversity and Inclusion. Faith and family are core to her life, and her work/life balance expertise is sought by many organizations, both as a lecturer and in member-leadership roles.

 

 


A North Carolina native, Janice is the fourth of eleven children. Watching her parents raise her and her ten siblings instilled in her a strong sense of family and fairness. As a student, Janice landed a scholarship to North Carolina State Agricultural and Technical College where she earned her English degree. Soon after graduating from college, she worked for the American Red Cross and then the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1976, Janice left her hometown armed with $700 and a hunger for success. She has returned many, many times since, often as a benefactor and always as a role model. Janice and her husband, Bernard, are the proud parents of two adult children, both graduates of the University of Southern California. They maintain homes in Rolling Hills, CA, Tarboro, NC, and Yorkshire, England.

Janice often proudly credits her roles as a mother, wife and advocate for strengthening her resolve to succeed. Ever enthusiastic about sharing her work/life balance experiences and know-how, Janice authored a book entitled ‘The Art of Work—How to Make Your Work, Work for You’. Filled with Janice’s own life experiences and featuring work sheets to help leaders apply these lessons to their personal lives, this book is slated to hit the bookshelves this year.

In 1978, Janice founded Act•1, which has since evolved into the ACT•1 Group, a global organization that is leading the human resources industry with innovative services and tools to partner with firms in optimizing human resource talent management.

The ACT•1 Group has three major components: the staffing brands, the business services brands and the group’s flagship, Agile•1 Workforce Solutions.

AppleOne Staffing Services provides temporary, direct hire and contract employees as well as staffing solutions through AppleOne and industry-specific brands AT-TECH, Accounting Advantage, All’s Well, Pro Travel and BilingualOne. Also within the Act•1 Group are the business services brands which include A-Check America, CNU, DSSI, CTA and AppleOne Payroll. A vital part of Janice’s conglomerate is Agile•1 Workforce Solutions, which provides technology and management systems for human capital and vendor management to create streamlined and efficient contingent staffing and project based processes.

In 2008, the Act•1 Group created temporary assignments for over 100,000 Americans, and over 20,000 Direct Hire placements. Additionally, 250,000 individuals were added to the Agile•1 Workforce System. Act•1 and her active industry involvement gives Janice a unique understanding of the challenges faced by American workers and business owners alike.



       
 
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