Business
PRESS ROOM: The HistoryMakers Kicks Off Black History Month on PBS with a One-On-One Interview Program: An Evening with Ken Chenault as part of its Groundbreaking Business Initiative
NNPA NEWSWIRE — “We’re excited to have produced the ‘must see’ program,” says Julieanna Richardson, Founder and President, The HistoryMakers. Having the opportunity to showcase the life and career of the most preeminent business leaders of our time – Ken Chenault presents a unique master class on corporate and civic leadership.
Chicago, Illinois – The HistoryMakers announces the one-on-one interview program, An Evening with Ken Chenault. The hour-long program provides a rare, inside, look into the life and career of one of America’s most successful CEOs – Ken Chenault. The program is hosted by CBS sportscaster and NFL network host James “J.B.” Brown and serves up a master class on corporate and civic leadership featuring interviews from those who know and have worked with Chenault during his phenomenal career.
Viewers will hear from Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett; former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns; Merck CEO Kenneth C. Frazier; Lazard Freres Senior Managing Director Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.; Media legend Oprah Winfrey; Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of The Carlyle Group David Rubenstein; former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Harvard President Larry Bacow and former Harvard University President Drew Faust; NBA legends and Hall of Famers Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr.; Chair of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Katherine Farley; his sons Kenneth and Kevin Chenault and his wife, Kathryn Chenault, among many others. An Evening With Ken Chenault peers behind the veil of Chenault’s rise to the head of one of the world’s most successful companies, and sheds light on his effective leadership as well as his legacy.
“We’re excited to have produced the ‘must see’ program,” says Julieanna Richardson, Founder and President, The HistoryMakers. Having the opportunity to showcase the life and career of the most preeminent business leaders of our time – Ken Chenault presents a unique master class on corporate and civic leadership.
Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett describes Chenault “as one of the greatest leaders of our time. He is a leader, he is competitive, and he is smart. The real test of leadership is when you go up the mountain and your troops follow you,” says Buffett. “They follow you because they believe in you and they believe you do see the value over the top mountain. If they don’t see it, they will still follow.”
Chenault when asked about his legacy ends the program saying: “My most important legacy that I can leave is that I made a meaningful difference in people’s lives, I hope I have been a catalytic agent for change,” says Chenault. “I firmly believe that none of us should be satisfied by the status quo—you should always try to change the status quo.”
Check your local listings for An Evening with Ken Chenault starting Sunday, February 3.
Over the next two to three years, according to Richardson, The HistoryMakers will focus on adding 150 additional interviews of noted African American business leaders to its collection – increasing its BusinessMakers category to 500. Some of those already interviewed include Johnson Publishing founder John H. Johnson, former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, Motown founder Berry Gordy, RadioOne founder Cathy Hughes, and Ariel Investments President, Mellody Hobson.
Currently, the history of African Americans in business make up less than one percent of Harvard Business School case studies, and there are no dedicated exhibits or collection of African American business leaders in any of the nation’s repositories.
“It is critical to show the world that African Americans have had an active role to play in both entrepreneurship and in corporate America,” said Richardson. “This story has been overlooked for far too long and deserves to be highlighted.”
BusinessMakers interviews will give The HistoryMakers unique context that can be aggregated and packaged for delivery in a variety of distribution formats for different audiences such as corporations, higher education, museums and media.
The HistoryMakers, a 501 (c) (3) national non-profit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is dedicated to recording and preserving the personal histories of well-known and unsung African Americans. It is the largest video oral history archive of its kind, and the only massive attempt, since the WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930’s, to record the African American experience in the first voice.
In 2014, it was announced that the Library of Congress would serve as the permanent repository for The HistoryMakers Collection. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, interviewed by The HistoryMakers in 2010, added, “The HistoryMakers archive provides invaluable first-person accounts of both well-known and unsung African-Americans, detailing their hopes, dreams and accomplishments—often in the face of adversity, this culturally important collection is a rich and diverse resource for scholars, teachers, students and documentarians seeking a more complete record of our nation’s history and its people.” To date, the organization has interviewed more than 3,200 HistoryMakers, with the goal of creating an archive of 5,000 interviews (30,000 hours) for the establishment of a one-of-a-kind digital archive.
For more information, visit The HistoryMakers website at: http://www.pbs.org/program/evening-ken-chenault/ and to view trailer of An Evening With Ken Chenault, click here: https://www.pbs.org/show/evening-ken-chenault/
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of July 24 – 30, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 24 – 30, 2024
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Activism
Oakland Post: Week of July 17 -23, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 17 -23, 2024
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Activism
Community Celebrates Historic Oakland Billboard Agreements
We, the Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition, which includes Oakland’s six leading community health clinics, all ethnic chambers of commerce, and top community-based economic development organizations – celebrate the historic billboard agreements approved last year by the Oakland City Council. We have fought for this opportunity against the billboard monopoly, against Clear Channel, for five years. The agreements approved by Council set the bar for community benefits – nearly $70 Million over their lifetime, more than 23 times the total paid by all previous Clear Channel relocation agreements in Oakland combined.
![The Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition.](https://www.postnewsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/economic-development-corporation-featured-web.jpg)
Grand Jury Report Incorrect – Council & Community Benefit
We, the Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition, which includes Oakland’s six leading community health clinics, all ethnic chambers of commerce, and top community-based economic development organizations – celebrate the historic billboard agreements approved last year by the Oakland City Council. We have fought for this opportunity against the billboard monopoly, against Clear Channel, for five years. The agreements approved by Council set the bar for community benefits – nearly $70 Million over their lifetime, more than 23 times the total paid by all previous Clear Channel relocation agreements in Oakland combined.
Unfortunately, a recent flawed Grand Jury report got it wrong, so we feel compelled to correct the record:
- Regarding the claim that the decision was made hastily, the report itself belies that claim. The process was five years in the making, with two and a half years from the first City Council hearing to the final vote. Along the way, as the report describes, there were multiple Planning Commission hearings, public stakeholder outreach meetings, a Council Committee meeting, and then a vote by the full Council. Not only was this not hasty, it had far more scrutiny than any of the previous relocation agreements approved by the City with Clear Channel, all of which provide 1/23 of the benefits of the Becker/OFI agreements approved by the Council.
- More importantly, the agreements will actually bring millions to the City and community, nearly $70M to be exact, 23 times the previous Clear Channel relocation agreements combined. They certainly will not cost the city money, especially since nothing would have been on the table at all if our Coalition had not been fighting for it. Right before the decisive City Council Committee hearing, in the final weeks before the full Council vote, there was a hastily submitted last-minute “proposal” by Clear Channel that was debunked as based on non-legal and non-economically viable sites, and relying entirely on the endorsement of a consultant that boasts Clear Channel as their biggest client and whose decisions map to Clear Channel’s monopolistic interests all over the country. Some City staff believed these unrealistic numbers based on false premises, and, since they only interviewed City staff, the Grand Jury report reiterated this misinformation, but it was just part of Clear Channel’s tried and true monopolistic practices of seeking to derail agreements that actually set the new standard for billboard community benefits. Furthermore, our proposals are not mutually exclusive – if Clear Channel’s proposal was real, why had they not brought it forward previously? Why have they not brought it forward since? Because it was not a real proposal – it was nothing but smoke and mirrors, as the Clear Channel’s former Vice President stated publicly at Council.
Speaking on behalf of the community health clinics that are the primary beneficiaries of the billboard funding, La Clinica de la Raza CEO Jane Garcia, states: “In this case, the City Council did the right thing – listening to the community that fought for five years to create this opportunity that is offering the City and community more than twenty times what previous billboard relocation agreements have offered.”
Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition
Native American Health Center | La Clínica de la Raza | West Oakland Health Center |
Asian Health Services | Oakland LGBTQ Center | Roots Community Health Center |
The Unity Council | Black Cultural Zone | Visit Oakland |
Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce | Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce | Oakland Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce |
Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce | Building Trades of Alameda County | (partial list) |
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