AGENDA:

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

George Fraser, President & Chairman FraserNet One of the nation's leading experts on effective networking and entrepreneurship in urban communities.	Dr. john powell, Chair University of California, Berkeley Center for Diversity & Inclusion One of the nation's leading experts on transformational leadership, race, poverty, and broad-based collaboration.

Dr. john a. powell

Professor john a. powell is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty and democracy. He was the founder and Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University and he holds the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the University’s Michael E. Moritz College of Law. He is now the Chair of the University of California at Berkeley’s - Center for Diversity and Inclusion.

Professor powell has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice and regionalism, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, opportunity based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. His written work includes four books, 18 book chapters, and more than 50 journal articles, op‐eds, essays, and position papers.

He is highly regarded as a public speaker with more than 125 invited speeches and presentations since 2003.Previously, he founded and directed the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He also served as Director of Legal Services of Greater Miami and was National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. Professor powell has worked and lived in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa. He has also lived and worked in India and done work in South America and Europe. He is one of the co‐founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national organizations.

Professor powell has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. He joined the faculty at The Ohio State University in 2002. Under his leadership, The Kirwan Institute has taken a national leadership role in researching, developing, and advocating for regional solutions to problems associated with racialized space. To advance this work, Professor powell has developed an “opportunity‐based” housing model that provides a critical and creative framework for thinking about affordable housing, racialized space, and how an individualʹs destiny is impacted by where they live. The central principal of this model is that residents of metropolitan regions are situated within a complex and interconnected web of opportunity structures that significantly shapes their quality of life. These opportunity structures include education, health care, employment, transportation, civic engagement and others.

George C. Fraser

George C. Fraser is Chairman and CEO of FraserNet, Inc., a company he founded some 20 years ago with the vision to lead a global networking movement that brings together diverse human resources to increase opportunities for people of African descent. He is considered by many to be a new voice for African Americans and one of the foremost authorities on economic development, networking and building effective relationships.

Fraser has held leadership positions with Procter & Gamble, the United Way, and Ford Motor Company. He wrote three acclaimed books: Success Runs in Our Race; The Complete Guide to Effective Networking in the African American Community and Race for Success; The Ten Best Business Opportunities for Blacks in America and most recently, Click: Ten Truths to Building Extraordinary Relationships.

Fraser also publishes the award-winning SuccessGuide Worldwide: The Networking Guide to Black Resources. He is the founder of the annual PowerNetworking Conference, where thousands of Black professionals, business owners, and community leaders gather to discuss and do business with each other.

He is the Chairman of Phoenix Village Academy; which consists of three afro-centric charter Schools that serves Cleveland and Akron inner city children. A popular speaker and author, Fraser's inspiring talks on success principles, effective networking, wealth creation, business ethics, and valuing diversity, are as popular among corporate professionals as they are among college students.

Fraser has appeared on CNN and in The Wall Street Journal. Over the past decade, the prestigious publication, Vital Speeches of the Day, has selected, reprinted and distributed worldwide, five of his speeches--a first for any professional speaker in America, regardless of color.

Upscale magazine named him one of the "Top 50 power brokers in Black America," and Black Enterprise magazine called him "Black America’s #1 Networker" and featured him on a cover issue. Personal growth "guru" Stephen Covey called him a "masterful teacher."

TV host and journalist, Tavis Smiley called him a "visionary with the rare combination of leadership and management skills." Fraser was featured in The New York Times bestseller, Masters of Networking, along with former Secretary of State Colin Powell. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree of Humane Letters from Jarvis Christian College.