viewed awards for excellence in technology. Not only would this create a national showcase for black talent that had long gone unrecognized, it also could be the spur to get corporate hiring managers to open their eyes to the long-under-appreciated capa- bilities of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities.
BEYA Paints a New Picture The Annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards (BEYA), inaugurated in 1987, grew out of that critical meeting. The rest is history. And what a history the last 25 years have seen. Dr. Slaughter was the first Black Engineer of the Year, standing at the head of a lineup of high-achievers whose accom- plishments clearly were reshaping corporate product lines and America’s military capabilities. Dr. Slaughter, then chancellor of the University of Maryland, had already made history several times, most notably as the first African American to lead the National Science Foundation.
Erroll Davis, then working his way up the ladder to the top executive offices at Wisconsin Power & Light, won a promotion almost immediately upon his return to work after being named the second Black Engineer of the Year in 1988. He then led a series of corporate mergers, ending up as chairman and CEO of a Midwest utility serving electric power and gas customers in four states.
Nuclear submarine commander Anthony Watson, a BEYA category winner, became the youngest captain in the U.S. Navy, retiring at the rank of rear admiral. His colleague, Vietnam vet- eran and F-14 Tomcat pilot Walter Davis, rose to flag rank also, first becoming a carrier task group commander and rising to vice admiral and head of the Space and Nuclear Warfare Command. IBM’s Dr. Mark Dean, who was mostly unknown to the
76 USBE&IT I WINTER 2011
general public even though he was a key architect of the world- wide PC revolution, received major media attention after he won a BEYA President’s Award and in 2000 won laurels as Black Engineer of the Year. IBM later promoted Dr. Dean to director of its famed Almaden Research Laboratory, and he now is regularly sought out for interviews on the direction in which technology is moving.
Former Black Engineer of the Year Walt Braithwaite, who moved from pioneering computer-aided manufacturing to bring order to computer-aided design with his work on the Boeing 777 airliner, rose to corporate officer and president of Boeing’s Africa division before retiring. Another BEYA winner, Lockheed Martin’s Art Johnson, be- came a senior corporate officer, then his colleague Linda Gooden rose to command an entire Lockheed business sector, with thou- sands of direct reports working in many countries. Dr. Lydia Thomas, a biologist recognized early on for her work running engineering labs at MITRE Corp, rose to become CEO of the spinoff Mitretek, now Noblis Corp., and won her own top honors as Black Engineer of the Year before she retired. It would be a stretch to claim BEYA’s high-profile recogni- tion of these individuals’ outstanding performance was what got them promoted, but many observers watching award-winners’ rise over the years have noted that, considering the intense review of credentials, career achievements and value to the employer that a company’s officers have to make to present a submission package that brings a gleam to the careful eyes of the BEYA selection panel, getting to the BEYA winner’s circle frequently does work as a kind of certification that that employer has indeed identified a top performer.
www.blackengineer.com
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