In its third consecutive year, the HBCU Impact Awards stem from the visionary concept of our CEO, Albert Williams. The primary goal is to acknowledge and honor individuals, organizations, corporations, and movements that have notably and positively influenced HBCUs and the empowerment of the African American community.
Offering a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes process of crafting this year’s awards, the 2023 recipients are poised to be unveiled on August 16th.
Asé Design Studio is a collaborative design-build practice based in Baltimore, Maryland founded in 2021 by Lawrence Moore (Heavy Paper Co) and Darryl Patterson (D. Patterson design studio). The Studio produces limited-edition and custom furniture, home furnishings, and wooden serve ware which can be purchased at their retail store—Lottie’s Place. Both founders are self-taught artists and woodworkers.
A native of New York City, Lawrence is a graduate of University at Buffalo where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Health and Human Services. Prior to the founding of Heavy Paper Co, he taught middle school in Baltimore City. When he is not creating in the Studio, you can find Lawrence roller skating, on a tennis court, or at a ballroom showcasing his latest Chicago Step dance moves.
Darryl grew up in Prince George’s County Maryland and Washington, DC. He graduated from Morgan State University with a degree in Business Administration and Finance, and is a 30-year careerist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Darryl loves all things ‘art’ and enjoys track and field events.
Lawrence and Darryl can be reached at asedesign520@gmail.com
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Michael Lucius Lomax, Ph.D., serves as president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization and the largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to underrepresented students.
A native of Los Angeles, Lomax entered Morehouse College at 16 and in 1968 was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in English as one of the College’s inaugural Phi Beta Kappa graduates. He earned a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Columbia University in 1972 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in American and African American Literature from Emory University in 1984.
In 1969, Lomax joined Morehouse as an English instructor. Over the next 20 years, he served on the faculties of both Morehouse and Spelman Colleges.
Lomax also began his civic career in Atlanta, working as the director of research and special assistant to Maynard Holbrook Jackson ’56, the city’s first African American mayor. During the Jackson Administration, he also helped establish Atlanta’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
In 1978, Lomax was elected to the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and became the first African American to be elected board chairman, responsible for a $500 million annual operating budget and 5,000 county employees. He founded the Fulton County Arts Council and the National Black Arts Festival, and oversaw the building of Georgia’s Interstate 400, the expansion and renovation of historic Grady Hospital, and construction of the Fulton County Government Center. In 1988, Lomax co-chaired the Democratic National Convention and was instrumental in bringing the 1996 Olympic Games to Atlanta.
Then, in 1994, he began his tenure as president of the National Faculty, an Atlanta-based organization dedicated to bringing together arts and sciences higher education scholars with K-12 teachers.\
From 1997 to 2004, Lomax served as the fifth president of Dillard University. During his tenure, he led a successful $60 million campaign and saw student enrollment increase by nearly 50 percent, accompanied by dramatic increases in private funding and alumni giving.
Since 2004, Lomax has served as president and chief executive officer of UNCF. Under his leadership, UNCF has raised more than $4 billion and helped more than 200,000 students earn college degrees and launch careers. Annually, UNCF’s work enables 50,000 students to go to college with UNCF scholarships and attend its 37-member Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Lomax also oversees the organization’s 400-plus scholarship programs, which award more than 10,000 scholarships a year.
In addition, he launched UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building, which supports member HBCUs to become stronger, more effective and self-sustaining.
Under Lomax’s leadership, UNCF has engineered partnerships with reform-focused leaders and organizations and worked to further advance HBCUs with Congress, the administration, and the Department of Education.
Among his many honors, Lomax was appointed to the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities by President George W. Bush. He serves on the boards of Handshake, the KIPP Foundation, Cengage Group and Teach for America. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate, a trustee of the Studio Museum in Harlem, a founding member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a past board member for America’s Promise Alliance.
A former Emory University trustee, Lomax, received the university’s most prestigious alumni honor, the Emory Medal, in 2004. His other awards include the Omicron Delta Kappa Laurel Crowned Circle Award, Morehouse’s Bennie Achievement Award, and 17 honorary degrees.
He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
Lomax resides in Atlanta, and is the father of three daughters, Deignan, Michele and Rachel, as well as the grandfather of Chloe, Averie, Bailey, Ethan and Michael, who is a rising senior at Morehouse College.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama(née Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met her future husband. She subsequently worked in nonprofits and as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago. Later, she served as vice president for community and external affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle married Barack in 1992, and they have two daughters.
Obama campaigned for her husband’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. She was the first African-American woman to serve as first lady. As first lady, Obama worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating. She has written three books including her The New York Times best selling memoir Becoming (2023) and The Light We Carry (2022).
Erica Ford is a world renown human rights activist and anti-violence leader. For more than 30 years, she has impacted the lives of thousands of disenfranchised Black and Brown people in vulnerable communities, schools, housing projects and prisons. Erica’s mantra, “Peace is a LIFEstyle,” is evident in her tireless, innovative approach to creating healthy communities in New York City. Her approach to violence intervention and prevention work in South East Queens, NY — which resulted in nearly four years without a homicide — is widely respected locally and nationally by grassroot organizations, rpersoefaerscshioenrsa,l sp uabnldic sgaofveetryn amnedn pt uobflficic hiaelsa.
l thIn 2002, Erica founded LIFE Camp Inc., a non-profit organization that provides marginalized youth and young adults with intensive case management, mentorship, access to education, employment opportunities and unconventional therapeutic services, to reduce violence and mitigate contact with the criminal justice system. Erica’s success in Queens continues to be heralded and modeled, for her innovative approach to addressing violence as a public health ctorisis.
She works closely with public and private community stakeholders and partners co-produce public safety, decrease incidents of gang violence and improve police-community relations. Erica’s work with LIFE Camp led to the creation of our own Chief of Streets that formed a successful pilot with the 113th precinct and school safety that really reimagined partnership & community policing.
Through her tireless vision and leadership, LIFE Camp successfully partnered with the 103rd, 113th and 105th precincts to maintain absolutely no shootings in their catchment area over 4th of July and Memorial Day weekends — two holidays that typically boast a large amount of shootings. Her team has been successful in mediating disputes between NYPD alonndg t-hstea cnodminmgunity, which helped to relieve partnership with local precincts has made her organization a proven partner in public safety and a trusted community resource, from de-escalating situations, riot prevention, gang intervention & prevention and safe surrenders.
In 2009, her vision of scaling her model to be used throughout NYC led to her leadership in the creation of the NYC Crisis Management System (CMS)an evidence-based anti-gun violence initiative that amplifies the leadership of community-based solutions to co-produce public safety. She was instrumental in the growth of this pilot of 5 sites funded at $12M evolving into a system with an office of violence prevention within the NYC Mayor’s Office, 34 sites throughout the 5 boroughs and 17 police precincts, and funding of more than $50M. CMS includes collaboration with more than 80 community organizations, 10 city agencies and, as lauded by the Mayor and then Police Commissioner, contributed to making NYC the “safest big city in America” with an overall 15% decline in gun violence and one entire weekend in NYC with absolutely no shootings. long-standing tension.
Her Erica’s leadership in CMS led to the Office to Prevent Gun Violence (OPVG) launching five mobile trauma units, 1 per borough, to connect victims of violence and families to services and resources and provide targeted trauma responses to communities where violent incidents occur outside of the CMS catchment areas, and At the request of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the office of then NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Erica played a vital role in creating the NYC Task Force on Gun Violence. Erica played a major role in the creative development of the mobile app Citizen, which started as a local pilot and is now a national resource for personal public safety awareness. Erica’s expertise has been proven and sought after throughout New York City and around the nation.
She’s the Co Chair of the National Black & Brown Gun Violence Prevention Consortium (BBGVPC), a strategic partnership comprised of black and brown-led institutions working to create equitable opportunities and safe communities In 2020, Erica was endowed with an MIT Elevate Fellowship, designed to amplify and scale the impact of her work as a social innovator. Mreocsetn tly, Erica led the discussion around violence prevention with Domestic Policy Director Ambassador Susan Rice, other members of the Biden Administration and a curated group of Black and Brown leaders in gun violence prevention, therapeutic service.. The result of these discussions with the White House staff was the largest investment in Black and Brown communities to combat violence in the history of America ($10B in grants, $200M in the budget, and $5.3B in policy).
Erica is the recipient of countless awards, proclamations and accolades from every strata, locally, regionally and nationally. Her birthday, April 8th has been officially proclaimed Erica Ford Day in New York City.
She founded a local initiative called Peace Week, which is now an official date on the New York City calendar, and her passion for peace has made the color orange the symbol of violence prevention & peace worldwide. Her love for her people and work in the community has been celebrated by a host of celebrities and industry leaders, whom she has connected with to bring their human resources to her organization, from academy award-winning actress Julianne Moore hosting master classes for high risk youth, to Deepak Chopra partnering with LIFE Camp to co-produce the long-standing Urban Yogis program, to Jada Pinkett-Smith and New York Native Fat Joe joining her on a 24-hour Instagram LIVE to raise summer youth Hemerp wlooyrmk ehnats fbuenedns hfoigr hNliYgCh tyeodu athc.r oss countless media platforms, including The New York Times, New York Daily News, NY1, BET, CNN, MSNBC, iHeartRadio, Emmis Communications, Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table, Essence and O The Oprah Magazine,among many others. Erica Ford is based in Queens, NY and graduated from York College (City University of New York), earning her Baccalaureate Degree in PoliticalScience.
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American civil rights and social justice activist, Baptist minister, radio talk show host, and TV personality, who is also the founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization.
In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts a weekday radio talk show, Keepin’ It Real, which is nationally syndicated by Urban One, and he is a political analyst and weekend host for MSNBC, hosting PoliticsNation.
