Business
Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit 2014 slated for Feb 26 – March 1 in Boca Raton, Florida
(PRNewsire) – BLACK ENTERPRISE (BE) will present its highest recognition of women’s achievement when it presents the Legacy Awards at the 2014 Women of Power Summit on February 26, 2014 in Boca Raton, Florida. The Women of Power Summit is the No. 1 executive development and leadership conference for women of color in the United States, annually attracting more than 700 corporate executives, professionals and businesswomen from across the country. The Women of Power Summit, hosted by State Farm Insurance, will take place February 26-March 1, 2014 at the Boca Raton Resort and Club.
The Women of Power Legacy Awards recognizes outstanding impact, achievement and leadership by women in business, the arts, education, government and other influential industries. Past Legacy Award recipients include luminaries such as the late National Council of Negro Women Chair and civil rights icon Dr. Dorothy Height; former Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Artistic Director Judith Jamison; Federal Express Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Cathy Ross and former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.
In 2012, a Legacy Award was named for the late Barbara Graves, wife of Black Enterprise Founder Earl Graves Sr. and a former educator, to be presented annually for outstanding achievement and service in education and other areas of service to young people.
Honorees to be recognized at the 2014 Women of Power Summit Legacy Awards Dinner, hosted by PepsiCo, include:
Cicely Tyson, legendary award-winning actress, one of the greatest of her generation. Among her many achievements, Tyson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the Golden Globe Award for her performance as Rebecca Morgan in Sounder (1972). She starred in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), for which she won 2 Emmy Awards. Throughout her career she has been nominated for 9 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning 3. She starred on Broadway in The Trip to Bountiful as Carrie Watts, for which she won the Tony Award, Outer Critics Award, and Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Valerie Daniels-Carter, Co-Founder, President & CEO, V&J Holding Companies. Along with her brother, John Carter, Daniels-Carter founded Milwaukee-based V&J Holdings as a holding company for ownership of franchised quick-service restaurants, beginning with a single Burger King franchise in 1982. Today, V&J holdings employees 4,000 people and owns 36 Burger Kings and nearly 70 Pizza Huts, along with several Haagen-Dazs, Coffee Beanery and Aunty Anne’s Pretzel stores (the last in partnership with NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal). V&J Holdings is one of the nation’s largest black-owned companies, ranked at No. 33 on the 2013 Black Enterprise Industrial/Service 100 list. Daniels-Carter is recognized among the nation’s most inspirational entrepreneurs.
Myrlie Evers-Williams, journalist, civil rights activist, former Chairwoman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Evers is the extraordinary civil rights activist and journalist who worked for over 3 decades to seek justice for the murder of her civil rights activist husband Medgar Evers in 1963. She was also chairwoman of the NAACP, and published several books on topics related to civil rights and her husband’s legacy. On January 21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama. As chair of the NAACP, Evers-Williams is credited with restoring both the image and the financial stability of the nation’s most accomplished civil rights organization, earning the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1998.
