Willie C. Martin heads Black Achievers group
David G. Turner serves as vice chair
Willie C. Martin, DuPont’s vice president of Operations, North America, and David G. Turner, Bank of America senior executive, Card Services Development, have accepted the positions, respectively, of chair and vice chair of the YMCA of Delaware’s 2007 Black Achievers in Business and Industry Awards committee.
They will be responsible for cultivating corporate and individual support to develop the Walnut Street YMCA’s Black Achievers program with a committee of active community and business leaders. The Black Achievers program provides college readiness experiences and exposure to community business environments. A major part of the program involves a spring tour of college campuses.
“Our first goal is to raise the awareness of community and business leaders to the vitality and accountability of the Walnut Street YMCA Black Achievers program,” said Martin. “Then we want the opportunity to show them how support of this program – both financially and with human resources – is beneficial to the community as a whole, and their businesses specifically.”
Willie Martin is a native of Martinsville, Virginia, He has been with DuPont since 1981. David Turner joined Bank of America in 2006.
Both Martin and Turner were recognized as Black Achievers and have extensive involvement in community organizations.
The program has a high profile awards dinner as its main source of funding, but youth Achievers meet on Saturdays throughout the year. This year, the 19th Black Achievers in Business and Industry Ceremonies will feature actor Terrence Howard as the keynote speaker (see right).
Save the date!
Terrence Howard will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Black Achievers Awards on December 13, 2007 at the Chase Center on the Riverfront.
Howard’s acting career got a jump start to prominence in 2005 with dynamic performances in the film Crash and in John Singleton’s Hustle & Flow. Howard was recently seen in Pride as Jim Ellis, a real life Philadelphia teacher, who introduced inner city black teenagers to competitive swimming. He starred in recent releases The Brave One alongside Jodie Foster and The Hunting Party with Richard Gere. Howard’s memorable performances include scene-stealing characters such as ‘Cowboy’ in Dead Presidents and ‘Louis Russ’ in Mr. Holland’s Opus (both 1995) and as ‘Quentin’ in Malcolm D. Lee’s 1999 film The Best Man. The latter earned him a NAACP Image Award and other nominations.