Dr. Roland Boyd Scott was, in the eyes of the public and of his physician colleagues, the father of research into sickle cell disease in the USA.  He was born April 18, 1909, in Houston, Texas, USA and died from congestive heart failure aged 93 years in Washington, DC, USA, on Dec 10, 2002.

An allergist by training, he became a passionate advocate for those with sickle cell disease after seeing many children with its symptoms.  Dr. Scott was a driving force behind the Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act of 1971, which established comprehensive research and treatment centers around the country for the disease.

“I think without a doubt, Dr Scott’s greatest contribution to sickle cell disease research and treatment was his role in launching the Sickle Cell Center Program”, William P Winter, acting director of Howard University’s Center for Sickle Cell Disease. “He lobbied Congress tirelessly and testified on a number of occasions to get the Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act of 1971 passed.”

Education

Dr. Scott grew up in Houston, Texas, and in Kansas City, Missouri, where he finished high school. He earned a bachelor’s degree and then a medical degree in 1934 from Howard University. He spent a year as an intern at the Kansas City General Hospital, then moved to Chicago, where he completed a paediatric residency at Provident Hospital and then a fellowship at the University of Chicago, Children’s Memorial Hospital, and the Chicago Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases.

Career

Along the way, Dr. Scott became board certified in allergy and immunology, as well as in paediatrics. Although he became a pioneer in sickle cell disease, he was not specifically trained as a haematologist.

At Howard University

The Howard University and Center for Sickle Cell Disease are accepting posters for the 40th anniversary of the Founding of the Center for Sickle Cell Disease and 4th Roland B. Scott Memorial Symposium.

The theme of the symposium is “Pain in Sickle Cell Disease: Battling Stigma and Gaps in Knowledge.” Scholars, community members, government leaders and other stakeholders will gather for this unique daylong event on May 10, 2011 in Washington, D.C to have a continuing conversation about Sickle Cell Disease.  The Symposium will include a Blood Drive and Sickle Cell Screenings.

The goals of the event are to explain what Sickle Cell Disease is, describe the cause and its manifestations, discuss how it affects the quality of life of patients and ways to mitigate those problems. High quality posters will reflect these goals and provide professional or community-based evidence.

Please review the following guidelines. If you have any questions, please contact the Scientific and Evaluation Committee Chair, Meseret Deressa at mderessa@howard.edu or 202-865-3388.

http://www.sicklecell.howard.edu/rolandbscott.htm

RSVP to the event now - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=194566297243116

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Lowery Stokes Sims is Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design. From 2000-2007 Sims was executive director then president of The Studio Museum in Harlem and served as Adjunct Curator for the Permanent Collection. Sims was on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999. A specialist in modern and contemporary art she is known for her particular expertise in the work of African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists. She has published extensively and her research on the work of the Afro-Cuban Chinese Surrealist artist Wifredo Lam was published by the University of Texas Press in 2002. In 1997 she organized a survey of the work of Richard Pousette-Dart at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sims has lectured nationally and internationally and guest curated numerous exhibitions most recently at the National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2004), The Cleveland Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society (2006). She is the editor and an essayist for the catalogue of the National Museum of the American Indian’s 2008 retrospective of Fritz Scholder. In 2003-04 Sims served on the jury for the memorial for the World Trade Center and between 2004 and 2006 served as the chair of the Cultural Institutions Group, a coalition of museums, zoos, botanical gardens and performing organizations funded by the City of New York. Sims was a fellow at the Clark Art Institute in spring 2007. In 2005 and 2006 she was Visiting Professor at Queens College and Hunter College in New York City and in fall 2007 Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Here are links to her work on WorldCat - http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n84-228840

Education

Sims received her Ph.D. in art history in 1995 from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. The subject of her dissertation was “Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923–1992,” which was published by the University of Texas Press (2002). Sims has received honorary degrees from the Maryland Institute College of Art (1988), Moore College of Art and Design(1991), Parsons School of Design at the New School University (2000), the Atlanta College of Art (2002), College of New Rochelle and Brown University (2003). She holds a B.A. in art history from Queens College of the City University of New York, her M.A. in art history from Johns Hopkins University. She graduated from Bishop Reilly HS in Fresh Meadows in 1966.

At the MET

At the Metropolitan Museum, she participated in the organization of several exhibitions including Ellsworth Kelly (1979), John Marin: Selected Works from the Museum’s Collection (1981), Henry Moore: 60 Years of His Art (1983), and Charles Burchfield (1984). In 1991, she curated Stuart Davis, American Painter, and she was the principal author of the catalogue. In 1995, Ms. Sims coordinated the Museum’s venue of the exhibition I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin, organized by the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and curatedPaul Cadmus: The Seven Deadly Sins and Selections from the Collection. In 1997, Dr. Sims curated the exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart, 1916–1992 and coordinated Francesco Clemente: Indian Watercolors organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In 1999 she organizedHans Hofmann in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and coordinated the exhibition Barbara Chase-Riboud: Monument Drawings, organized by the St. John’s Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Sims also organized several exhibitions from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in cooperation with the American Federation of Arts, for which she was also involved in writing catalogues: The Figure in Twentieth Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1985), The Landscape in Twentieth Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1991), American Still Life Painting (1995). For more than a decade, Dr. Sims also was responsible for the annual installation of the Museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, including the 1999 installation, Abakanowicz on the Roof.

The Studio Museum in Harlem

At The Studio Museum in Harlem, Sims was the coordinating curator for the 2003 exhibition, Challenge of the Modern: African American Artists, 1925–1945, and Fred Brown: Icons and Heroes (2003), which she originally curated for the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 2004 she was the curator for Curator’s Eye, focusing on contemporary Installation art in Jamaica, at the National Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica. She was also the curator for The Persistence of Geometry, selections from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland in 2006. That same year she co-curated Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery at the New York Historical Society.

Lectures & Teachings

Sims has written extensively on modern and contemporary artists, with a special interest in African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists. She has lectured at Princeton University, Vassar College, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum, the Columbus Art Museum,University of Arizona at Tucson, Birmingham Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the University of Texas at Austin, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Florida International University, San Antonio Museum of Art, Hobart and William Smith College, The National Gallery of Bermuda, Ball State University and Wellesley College, among other institutions. In 1991 she received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the College Art Association for distinction in art criticism.^[1]

Sims has also had extensive experience teaching art history and museum practice at Queens College, the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She also has been a lecturer for the Internship Program at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Curatorial and Museum Training Internship courses at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and a visiting critic and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Texas at Austin and theUniversity of Hawaii. In 2005 she was appointed A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Guest Curator

She has served nationally and internationally as a juror and guest curator at The Queens Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Pratt Institute, the Caribbean Cultural Center (New York), Cooper Union, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, the California Museum of Afro-American History and Culture, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans and the National Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica.

Public Appointments

While at the Studio Museum Sims served as Chair of the Cultural Institutions Group, a coalition of botanical gardens, historic sites, museums and zoos funded by the City of New York. She also served on panels for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, TheMetropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City, The Metropolitan Life Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities. In 1981, Ms. Sims was elected member of the Commission on the Status of Women of the City of New York, and in 1987 was appointed for a five-year term to the New York State Council on the Arts by Governor Mario Cuomo. She has served on the board of Art Table, Inc. and the Caribbean Cultural Center and the advisory committee of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School for Social Research, and the advisory committee of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She is currently on the boards of the Art Matters and Tiffany Foundations and Art 21. In 1993, she was elected to the board of the College Art Association for a four-year term, and was co-chair of the studio art program for the 1994 annual conference of the CAA. In 2003-2004, she served on the jury for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition to choose the memorial for the World Trade Center site. In 2006, she was the Porter Colloquium Keynote Speaker.

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Information and Images from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowery_Stokes_Sims

http://juliemenin.com/category/topics/entertainment/?sort=alphabetical

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Early Life

Okolloh was born into a relatively poor family. She has said that her parents sent her to a private elementary school that they could “barely afford,” which “set the foundation for what ended up being my career.

Education

Ory graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Activist

In 2006 she co-founded the parliamentary watchdog site Mzalendo (Swahili: “Patriot”). The site sought to increase government accountability by systematically recording bills, speeches, MPs, standing orders, etc. When Kenya was engulfed in violence following a disputed presidential election in 2007, Okolloh helped create Ushahidi (Swahili: “testimony”), a website that collected and recorded eyewitness reports of violence using text messages and Google Maps. The technology has since been adapted for other purposes (including monitoring elections and tracking pharmaceutical availability) and used in a number of other countries.

Okolloh also has a personal blog, Kenyan Pundit, which was featured on Global Voices Online.

Career

She also works as a legal consultant for NGOs and has worked at Covington and Burling, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and the World Bank in the past.

Public Speaker

She is a frequent speaker at conferences including TED Global and Poptech on issues around citizen journalism, the role of technology in Africa, and the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa. She currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Heading to Google

Here, Ory writes about her new job at Google.

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Jerri L. DeVard has been Principal of DeVard Marketing Group since 2007. She is responsible for national marketing, advertising, brand management, online marketing and multicultural marketing. Nokia just hired Ms. DeVard as their new Chief Marketing Officer (November 2010).

Ms. DeVard is also a member of the Board of Trustees at Spelman College and has been since 2005. She is currently the Vice Chair.

Early Life

DeVard was born in Harlem, an uptown neighborhood of New York City with a rich African-American history. Her mother, Jean DeVard-Kemp, taught her the value of education by her own example, earning a college degree, a master’s, and a Ph.D. while working as a single mother supporting two children. Jerri DeVard describes her mother as her “hero.”

Education

Ms. DeVard graduated from Spelman College with a degree in Economics (Class of 1979) and obtained an MBA in Marketing from Clarke Atlanta University’s Graduate School of Business.

Career

Ms. DeVard served as the Senior Vice President of Retail Markets Group of Verizon Enhanced Communities. She served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Management of Verizon Communications Inc. from 2003 to 2005. Ms. DeVard served as the Chief Marketing Officer for Citigroup, where she was responsible for the overall marketing, sales and integration of Citigroup’s e-commerce division as well as development and execution of the advertising and marketing for the AOL and Microsoft Partnerships. Prior to 2003, she held a variety of positions, including the Chief Marketing Officer of the e-Consumer business at Citibank N.A.; Vice President of Marketing for Revlon Inc.’s Color Cosmetics; Vice President of Marketing for Harrah’s Entertainment; Director of Marketing for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings; and several brand management positions at the Pillsbury Company.

Ms. DeVard has significant expertise in brand management and marketing solutions for consumer products companies. She serves as a director of Gurwitch Products, as a member of PepsiCo African American Advisory Board. She served as an Independent Director of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation from February 2, 2004 to 2006.

“Jerri has an incredible ability to see things from the eye of the customer,” says Stephen P. Joyce, vice president and managing director of Citibank where DeVard was appointed vice president of new business development in March 1998. “Her energy level is infectious, and she inspires others to want to follow her lead.”

Service & Recognition

DeVard was recognized as one of Black Enterprise magazine’s 75 Most Powerful African-Americans in Corporate America and was named among the Wall Street Journal’s Women to Watch. DeVard is a member of the Board of Directors of Tommy Hilfiger Corp. She also serves on the Pepsi African-American Advisory Board. In addition, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Executive Leadership Council and the Executive Committee for the American Advertising Federation Board (AAF). DeVard is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Ever the optimist, DeVard offers this key to success: “Find what you’re good at, know what you enjoy, then develop the confidence to go after what you want.”

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Information obtained from various resulting articles from a Google Search of Jerri DeVard.

Image from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/11/24/businessinsider-jerri-devard-11.DTL

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In 1887, Kelly Miller became the first African-American Mathematics Graduate Student. He went on to become extremely influential at Howard University and planted the seed for what is now called the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University.

Early Life

Kelly Miller was the sixth of ten children born to Kelly Miller, a free Negro who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and Elizabeth (Roberts) Miller, a slave.

Education

Miller received his early education in one of the local primary schools established during Reconstruction and, based on the recommendation of a missionary (Reverend Willard Richardson) who recognized Miller’s mathematical aptitude, Miller attended the Fairfield Institute in Winnsboro, South Carolina from 1878 to 1880. Awarded a scholarship to Howard University, he completed the Preparatory Department’s three-year curriculum in Latin, Greek, and mathematics in two years (1880-1882), then attended the College Department at Howard from 1882 to 1886.

During the period from 1882 to 1886, while Miller attended the College Department at Howard University, he also worked as a clerk for the U.S. Pension Office for two years. Kelly Miller was appointed to the position in the Pension Office after taking the civil service examination a test prescribed by the Civil Service Act passed during the administration of President Grover Cleveland. Miller’s greatest influence while at Howard University where his professors of Latin (James Monroe Gregory) and History (Howard president William Weston Patton, who also taught philosophy and conducted weekly vesper services required of all students). He received a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) from Howard University in 1886. Miller continued to work at the Pension Office after graduation in 1886. He also studied advanced mathematics (1886-1887) with Captain Edgar Frisby, an English mathematician at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Frisby’s chief at the observatory, Simon Newcomb, who was also a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, and who recommended Miller for admission to Hopkins University President Daniel Coit Gilman.

From Howard University, Kelly Miller received a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Mathematics (1901) and a law degree (LL.D.) in 1903.

First African-American Graduate Student in Mathematics

Johns Hopkins University had recently become the first American school to offer graduate work in mathematics. As Miller was to be the first African American student admitted to the university, the recommendation was decided by the Board of Trustees, who decided to admit Miller based on the university founder’s known Quaker beliefs.

From 1887 to 1889 Miller performed graduate work in Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy. When an increase in tuition ($100 to $200) prevented Miller from continuing his studies, Kelly Miller left (and Johns Hopkins closed its doors to Blacks) and taught at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. (1889-1890), whose principal was Francis L. Cardozo. [Note: One source reports that Kelly Miller left school after deciding that his best contribution would be in the areas of civil rights.]

Kelly Miller

Career

After teaching mathematics briefly at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. (1889-1890), he was appointed to the faculty of Howard University in 1890. Five years later Miller added sociology to Howard’s curriculum because he thought that the new discipline was important for developing objective analyses of the racial system in the United States. As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, he modernized the classical curriculum, strengthening the natural and social sciences.

From 1895 to 1907 Miller was professor of mathematics and sociology, but he taught sociology exclusively after that, serving from 1915 to 1925 as head of the new sociology department. In 1894 Miller had married Annie May Butler, a teacher at the Baltimore Normal School, with whom he had five children.

Noted for his brilliant mind, Miller rapidly became a major figure in the life of Howard University. In 1907 he was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. During his twelve-year deanship the college grew dramatically, as the old classical curriculum was modernized and new courses in the natural sciences and the social sciences were added. Miller’s recruiting tours through the South and Middle Atlantic states were so successful that the enrollment increased from 75 undergraduates in 1907 to 243 undergraduates in 1911.

Although Miller was a leader at Howard for most of his tenure there, his national importance derived from his intellectual leadership during the conflict between the “accommodationism” of Booker T. Washington and the “radicalism” of the nascent civil rights movement led by W. E. B. Du Bois. Critical of Washington’s famous Cotton States Exposition Address (1895) in 1896, Miller later praised Washington’s emphasis on self-help and initiative. He remained an opponent of the exaggerated claims made on behalf of industrial education and became one of the most effective advocates of higher education for black Americans when it was attacked as “inappropriate” for a people whose social role was increasingly limited by statute and custom to agriculture, some skilled trades, unskilled labor, and domestic service.

Education Advocate

In the Educational Review, Dial, Education, the Journal of Social Science, and other leading journals, Miller argued that blacks required wise leadership in the difficult political and social circumstances following the defeat of Reconstruction, and only higher education could provide such leaders. Moreover, the race required physicians, lawyers, clergymen, teachers, and other professionals whose existence was dependent on higher education. Excluded from most white colleges, black Americans would have to secure higher education in their own institutions, Miller argued, and some of them, like Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta Universities, would emphasize liberal education and the professions rather than the trades and manual arts (industrial education) stressed at Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes. In the debate between the advocates of collegiate and industrial education, Miller maintained that the whole matter was one of “ratio and proportion” not “fundamental controversy.” Recognized as one of the most influential black educators in the nation because of his extensive writing and his leadership at Howard, Miller was sought out by both camps in the controversy but was trusted by neither because of his refusal to dogmatically support either of the rival systems.

Known as “philosopher of the race question”

Miller’s reputation as a “philosopher of the race question” was based on his brilliant articles, published anonymously at first, on “radicals” and “conservatives” in the Boston Transcript (18, 19 Sept. 1903). With some alterations, these articles later became the lead essay in his book Race Adjustment (1908). Miller’s essays insisted on the right of black Americans to protest against the injustices that had multiplied with the rise of the white supremacy movement in the South, as the Du Bois “radicals” did, but he also advocated racial solidarity, thrift, and institution-building as emphasized by the followers of Washington.

Characteristically, Miller had two reputations as a public policy analyst, first as a compromiser between black radicals and conservatives, and second as a race spokesman during the prolonged crisis of disfranchisement and the denial of civil rights by white supremacists and their elected representatives in Congress.

The Disgrace of Democracy: An Open Letter to President Woodrow Wilson, a pamphlet published in August 1917, was Miller’s most popular effort. Responding to recent race riots in Memphis and East St. Louis, Miller argued that a “democracy of race or class is no democracy at all.” Writing to Woodrow Wilson, he said,

“It is but hollow mockery of the Negro when he is beaten and bruised in all parts of the nation and flees to the national government for asylum, to be denied relief on the basis of doubtful jurisdiction. The black man asks for protection and is given a theory of government.”

More than 250,000 copies of the pamphlet were sold, and the military authorities banned it on army posts.

Contributions to Sociology

Although Miller was best known as a controversialist, he also made important but frequently overlooked contributions to the discipline of sociology. His earliest contribution was his analysis of Frederick L. Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, published by the American Economic Association in 1896. Hoffman attempted to demonstrate that the social disorganization of black Americans (weak community institutions and family structure) was caused by an alleged genetic inferiority and that their correspondingly high mortality rate would result in their disappearance as an element of the American population. Miller’s refutation of Hoffman’s claims, A Review of Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, published by the American Negro Academy in 1897, was based on a technical analysis of census data.

Perhaps Miller’s most lasting contribution to scholarship was his pioneering advocacy of the systematic study of black people. In 1901 he proposed to the Howard board of trustees that the university financially support the publications of the American Negro Academy, whose goals were to promote literature, science, art, higher education, and scholarly works by blacks, and to defend them against “vicious assaults.” Although the board declined, it permitted the academy to meet on the campus. Convinced that Howard should use its prestige and location in Washington to become a national center for black studies, Miller planned a “Negro-Americana Museum and Library.” In 1914 he persuaded Jesse E. Moorland, a Howard alumnus and Young Men’s Christian Association official, to donate to Howard his large private library on blacks in Africa and in the United States as the foundation for the proposed center. This became the Moorland Foundation (reorganized in 1973 as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center), a research library, archives, and museum that has been vital to the emergence of sound scholarship in this field.

Demotion

The years after World War I were difficult ones for Miller. J. Stanley Durkee, the last of Howard’s white presidents, was appointed in 1918 and set out to curtail the baronial power of the deans by building a new central administration. Miller, a conspicuously powerful dean, was demoted in 1919 to dean of a new junior college, which was later abolished in 1925. A leader in the movement to have a black president of Howard, Miller was a perennial favorite of the alumni but was never selected.

Although his influence at Howard declined significantly by the late 1920s through his retirement in 1934, Miller’s stature as a commentator on race relations and politics remained high. He had become alarmed by the vast social changes stimulated by World War I and was seen as increasingly conservative.

He opposed the widespread abandonment of farming by black Americans and warned that the mass migration to cities would be socially and culturally destructive. At a time when many younger blacks regarded labor unions as progressive forces, Miller was skeptical of them, citing their history of persistent racial discrimination. He remained an old-fashioned American patriot despite the nation’s many disappointing failures to extend democracy to black Americans.

As a weekly columnist in the black press, Miller’s views were published in more than one hundred newspapers. By 1923 it was estimated that his columns reached half a million readers.

Miller died at his home on the campus of Howard University.

Kelly Miller Middle School is located at 217 49th Street Northeast, Washington, DC

Information obtained from http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/special/miller_kelley.html

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Dr. Joy DeGruy is a nationally and internationally renowned researcher, educator, author and presenter. Dr. Joy, as most know her, is a tell-it-like-it-is ambassador for healing and a voice for those who’ve struggled in search of the past, and continue to struggle through the present. A highly skilled and educated activist for social justice, Dr. Joy reaches people on the community level and has a captivating way of persuading others to search for a deeper understanding of themselves.

Dr. Joy is the acclaimed author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome—America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, and the newly released, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: The Study Guide. In P.T.S.S.: The Study Guide, Dr. Joy revisits the topics she covers in P.T.S.S. and provides a detailed mapping of how you can begin the change process in your personal life, employment, family and in your community. She illustrates how—with thoughtful self–exploration—each of us can evaluate our behaviors and replace negative and damaging behaviors with those that will promote, ensure and sustain the healing and advancement of African Americans.

Education

Dr. DeGruy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications; two master degrees in Social Work and Psychology; and a PhD in Social Work Research.

Experience

With over twenty years of practical experience as a professional in the field of social work, she gives a practical insight into various cultural and ethnic groups that form the basis of contemporary American society.

Through lectures, workshops, seminars and special guest appearances, Dr. DeGruy has shined a light on the critical issues affecting society. Those who have experienced Dr. DeGruy in person, can tell you that they have been “stimulated, enlightened and inspired.” Dr. DeGruy’s seminars have been lauded as the most dynamic and inspirational currently being presented on the topics of culture, race relations and contemporary social issues. Her clients have included academic institutions such as Oxford University, Harvard University, Columbia University, Fisk University, Smith College, Morehouse College, University of Chicago, and Portland State University where she is currently an Assistant Professor. She has also presented to federal and state agencies such as The Federal Bureau of Investigation; Probation and Parole agencies; Juvenile Justice Judges Association; and Police agencies. Major corporations and companies such as Nordstrom, Nike, the NBA Rookies Camp, and the renowned G-CAPP program, all have experienced Dr. Joy’s expertise and charisma. Dr. DeGruy’s workshops go far beyond the topic of cultural sensitivity; she also provides specialized clinical work in areas of mental health and ecological resilience.

There is a conversation about her book online today on Facebook’s HBCU Connect Fan Page.

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Information courtesy of Dr. Joy’s website

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Dr. Robert Bell is an African-American statistician – a demographic that has low statistical numbers in and of itself. How many African-American statisticians do you know? Probably not many. And how many do you know have won $1 million challenges? Well, we know of at least one!

Dr. Robert Bell earned a BS in Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College (1972) and a Masters in Statistics, University of Chicago (1973), and a PhD in Statistics, Stanford University (1980). Dr. Robert Bell has been a member of the Statistics Research Department at AT&T Labs-Research since 1998. He previously worked at RAND doing public policy analysis. His current research interests include machine learning methods, analysis of data from complex samples, and record linkage methods. He has served on several National Research Council panels advising the Census Bureau and chairs a current panel on coverage measurement for the 2010 census. He is a member of the board of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Dr. Robert Bell is also member of the winning team, BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, that won Netflix’s $1Million Challenge. The seven-person team is made up of statisticians, machine-learning experts and computer engineers from the United States, Austria, Canada and Israel. View the team’s website, a record of their progress on the road to becoming winners.

Netflix $1Million Challenge Winners

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Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., is the fourth president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a position she assumed in January 2003. She originally joined the staff in April 2001 as the senior vice president and director, Health Care Group. In 2004, she was voted #22 of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes Magazine.

Prior to coming to the Foundation, Lavizzo-Mourey was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as director of the Institute on Aging. She was the deputy administrator of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research now known as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality within the Department of Health and Human Services. While in government service, Lavizzo-Mourey worked on the White House Health Care Policy team, including the White House Task Force on Health Care Reform where she co-chaired the working group on Quality of Care.

Lavizzo-Mourey has served on many federal advisory committees, including the Task Force on Aging Research; the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics, where she chaired the Subcommittee on Minority Populations; and the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry. She recently completed work as co-director of a congressionally requested Institute of Medicine study on racial disparities in health care resulting in the publication of Unequal Treatment, Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. She is the author of scores of articles and several books.

Listen to Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey talk about Childhood Obesity on WashingtonPost.com

Lavizzo-Mourey is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates and numerous other awards, including those received from the Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Health and Human Services, The National Academy of Sciences, American College of Physicians, National Library of Medicine, American Medical Women’s Association, National Medical Association and University of Pennsylvania.

Lavizzo-Mourey earned a medical degree at Harvard Medical School, followed by a master of business administration at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. After completing a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her geriatrics training.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conducts research and provides support in the following areas:

Visit their website for more information on their impact across the nation via the organization’s assessment report. They have an awesome website overall and a neat slide presentation builder used to help export data and create slideshows for website visitors.

Follow them on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rwjf

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If you want someone specific featured on The Black Scholars Index, please let us know – featured@blackscholarsindex.com.

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Dr. Mark Dean

Mark Dean is an inventor and a computer scientist. He holds three of the nine original IBM patents upon which the IBM PC personal computers were based. He led the team that developed the ISA bus, and he led the design team responsible for creating the first one-gigahertz computer processor chip.

Born in Jefferson City, Tennessee, Dean holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Florida Atlantic University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Dean is the first African-American to become an IBM Fellow which is the highest level of technical excellence at the company. In 1997, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Currently, he is an IBM Vice President overseeing the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.

Mark Dean 1998 holding the first Gigaherz (1000mhz) chip

Dean led a team that developed the interior architecture (ISA systems bus) that enables multiple devices, such as modems and printers, to be connected to personal computers. Dean made history again by leading the design team responsible for creating the first 1-gigahertz processor chip, another significant step in making computers faster and smaller.

Dr. Dean has said

“when I was accepted at Stanford I had been out of school for ten years, so it was very difficult. I encourage people to go on to graduate school, but they should not wait as long as I did. It makes it very hard, But for me it was definitely the right thing to do and Stanford was the right place to do it. In hindsight, Stanford was the best choice because I already knew what I wanted to work on and both David Dill and then Mark Horowitz enthusiastically supported me in pursuing the research tropic I wanted to work on. The research I engaged in as a graduate student was very prudent, in that while some of the technology isn’t necessarily what we are doing today, it did allow me to better understand the best ways (pros and cons of certain approaches) to approach the development of processes. I came to Stanford with no knowledge of either circuits or processes, I knew logic design, architectures, bus interfaces and protocol, but I had no real knowledge of transistors, silicon processes and circuits. Stanford was my first exposure to custom circuits design to building things at transistor level. I am now managing a group focused on high-speed circuit design and I couldn’t have done it without the background I received at Stanford.”

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

***In 1995, Dr. Dean was named an IBM Fellow in 1995, one of only 50 active fellows of IBM’s 300,000 employees. Dean was the first African American to be honored with IBM Fellowship.

***In 1997 Dean was Vice President of Performance for the RS/6000 Division and, along with his colleague Dennis Moeller, Dean was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame which has under 150 members. For inventing “a system that has allowed PCs to become part of our lives.”

***In 1999, as Director of IBM’s Austin Research Lab (in Austin, Texas), he lead the team that built a gigaherz (1000mhz) chip which did a billion calculations per second.

***In 2001 he was elected member of the National Academy of Engineers (NAE) .

***In 2004, Dr. Dean was selected as one of the 50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science.

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If you would like to see someone featured on The Black Scholars Index, please let us know – featured@blackscholarsindex.com

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