My holiday present came a week early when I learned last Friday evening that Rev. Jesse Jackson accepted my invitation to be the Keynote Speaker at the GNEMSDC Awards Gala on April 28, 2011. Rev. Jackson has been a witness to the evolution of American society from a racially closed and oppressive one to one that has made possible a President Barack Obama. His work in social change has always had an economic focus and continues today in the form of the Rainbow Push Wall Street Project. Below are excerpts from the bio his office provided.
"The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. founder and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition, is one of America's foremost civil rights, religious and political figures. Over the past forty years, he has played a pivotal role in virtually every movement for empowerment and social justice. On August 9, 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Reverend Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Reverend Jackson has been called the "Conscience of the Nation" and the "Great Unifier," challenging America to be inclusive and to establish just and humane priorities for the benefit of all. He is know for bringing people together on common ground across lines of race, culture, class, gender and belief.
For his work in human and civil rights and nonviolent social change, Reverend Jackson has received more than 40 honorary doctorate degrees and frequently lectures at major colleges and universities including Howard, Yale, Princeton, Morehouse, Harvard, Columbia, Stamford and Hampton. He was made an Honorary Fellow of Regents Park College at Oxford University in the UK in November 2007, and received an Honorary Fellowship from Edge Hill University in Liverpool, England. In March 2010, Reverend Jackson was inducted into England's prestigious Cambridge Union Society. In April 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
His impressive bio goes on for 5 more pages of accomplishments around the world and I encourage you to go on the GNEMSDC website this week to read his full bio. Needless to say we are honored to have him as our Keynote Speaker, and I fully expect that we will surpass all of our previous records in attendance and participation. This is sure to be one of the most important events in all of New England in 2011. Mark your calendar now for April 28, 2011 and buy your sponsorships now to guarantee your seats.
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| Our work here at the GNEMSDC is not possible without the support of our corporate members and our certified MBEs. We need your support to bring the high quality events and activities whose primary objective is to develop stronger more profitable MBEs. As you can see from today's announcement, 2011 already promises to be an exciting and special year. Annual Sponsors guarantee their participation in our major events and preferred seating and other accommodations. Please consider becoming a 2011 Corporate Annual Sponsor or a 2011 MBE Annual Sponsor, it will help you as well as the Council. For more information the various sponsorship levels, go to www.gnemsdc.org and click on Annual Sponsorships on the home page. Or, you are also welcome to call us at 888-874-7114. | |
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| On behalf of the Board of Directors, I welcome the Fusco Builders as a new corporate member. For three generations Fusco Builders, a construction and construction management company based in New Haven, has been a major player in the construction industry in the region. "Founded in New Haven in 1924, Fusco Corporation is a privately owned family business which operates in the sphere of commercial construction. For over 84 years, three generations of Fuscos have lead the business through accomplishments such as the restoration of the Shubert Theater and Yale University's Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the building of the Connecticut Tennis Center and 100 Pearl Street in Hartford, Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport and Harbor Plaza in Stamford, CT. Welcome Fusco Builders to the GNEMSDC. | |
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| On January 10 CONNDOT is holding a pre-bid conference for the New Britain-Hartford Busway Project. The program will start at 9:00 AM and be done by noon. This DBE conference is designed to inform DBEs of the opportunities as primes and as subs. (DBE stands for Disadvantaged Business Enterprises. This is the certification offered by the state Department of Transportations across the country.) This meeting will take place at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, 1615 Stanley Street (Student Center). To register for this event and reserve your space email, sbrooks@mbakercorp.com by January 3, 2011. | |
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| Having Rev. Jackson as our keynote speaker for the Awards Gala will guarantee a very large audience of leaders from around the region to be in attendance. This provides an excellent opportunity for corporate members and MBEs to be the focus of some great publicity and well deserved attention. It is not too early for corporate members and MBEs to start thinking about their successes in 2010 and of those who helped them achieve their goals. MBEs, in particular need to view the Awards Gala as an opportunity to market those successes, in order to build upon them. They can do that by speaking with their corporate clients and asking them if they would nominate them for Supplier of the Year. And corporate members also need speak with the MBEs who they assisted and ask whether they would consider nominating them for one or more of the corporate awards featured (Corporation of the Year, Buyer of the Year, and Advocate of the Year). This year we also will add a new Corporation of the Year that will be presented to a GNEMSDC local corporate member as distinct from NMSDC national members. Nomination forms will soon be up on the website. We will keep you posted. | |
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| We are busy filling in our 2011 Calendar of Events, but we still have room for corporate members of the Council to host and/or sponsor workshops, seminars, receptions or other events. These corporate hosted and sponsored events are very effective tools in sharing information with MBEs and learning more about the capabilities of our MBEs. The Council is here to assist you in the planning, marketing and administration of these events. We also have the capability of providing you accurate feedback on the successes of your event. So if you are interested in hosting or sponsoring an event in 2011, give us a call and we can get started making 2011 a remarkable year. | |
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| The GNEMSDC is just about finished on our latest technology upgrade. One of the consequences of the upgrade is that you will no longer be able to reach us at our old cmsdc.org email addresses. Please check your systems and make the change from tparedes@cmsdc.org to tparedes@gnemsdc.org for all of our employees. And we apologize if some emails have gotten lost in cyberspace during this transition, please reach back out to us if we have not returned your email. Thank you. In addition, we have upgrade the website so that all of local and national corporate members are listed with links to their home pages. | |
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| The GNEMSDC is looking for dynamic manager to assist us to expand our operations in the Greater Boston market. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunity send your resume to Gloria Yopp at gyopp@gnemsdc.org. The job description will be posted on our website later this week. | |
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 Naughty or Nice? I am trying to decide whether I can honestly with a straight face tell Santa that this past year I was nice. I would like to think that I was nice. I was not arrested or convicted of even a misdemeanor. Not that this is a high standard of being nice, but I know at times my mouth, or more often my written words are pointed and sometimes spiked with a bit of righteous indignation. However, these are rarely personal or have any ill intent . But if I have offended anyone, I want you to know that I am not just concerned about my status with Santa, I am sorry. And please if I have offended anyone, I would appreciate a note saying that my humble apology is accepted so that I can leave on my chimney as evidence to Santa that I am worthy of more than a lump of coal this year. As you can see, I am really fearful that I have some risk this year of not getting any of the things on my holiday wish list. Santa, if you are listening or reading, send me a sign so that I am not broken hearted on Christmas morning. If I am going to get a lump of coal, I would rather know now, and I won't go through the trouble of making so many insincere apologies and works of penance. But if there is a chance, even the slightest chance that I will get that new; fill in the blank, because it is bad luck to tell anyone what you really want other than Santa - please send me a sign. And if there is anyone in my readership that has a special relationship with Santa, perhaps you will be so kind as to vouch for me, there might be something in it for you. We can talk off line as they say. But in all seriousness, I wish all of you a safe and happy holiday season. I look forward to serving you in 2011, and Santa that includes you. I understand your IT needs are massive. In your service Dr. Fred | |
