I hope your New Year is off to a great start!

Welcome to the "Speaking of Success", our newsletter that features what we're doing at the Black Speakers Online world headquarters in Los Angeles, California.

I'm thrilled to introduce you to some powerful women in this issue. With Women’s History Month around the corner, be sure to take a look at these Black voices who truly know how to inspire others.

As always, I am here to help you find dynamic speakers for your events and ensure you reach your event goals. Your success is our success!

Whether you represent an educational institution, corporation, professional organization or municipality, what better way to support diversity than by working with a Black owned speakers bureau? Our founder – Norma Thompson Hollis – has opened doors for Black speakers through her years of hard work and relentless commitment to celebrating diversity in all corners of the world.

Wishing you great things in 2007!

Sincerely,
Denise Jones
Executive Booking Manager
Black Speakers Online

Sha' Givens is a renown author, speaker, and trainer who has been featured in ESSENCE Magazine, Gospel Today and other nationally known publications. She is recognized around the United States and the world as the power driven woman who started a Literacy School in East Africa with an overdrawn bank account, minimal resources and a big vision.

Raised in the ghettoes of Newark, New Jersey, at the age of 5, Gail Harris saw a WWII themed movie called A Wing and a Prayer starring Don Ameche. Mesmerized by a scene of the actor briefing Navy pilots before the climatic Battle of Midway scene, she decided that was what she’d do when she grew up. Unaware of the existence of a federal law which prohibited women from going into combat, one that would not be changed until 1994 she forged ahead with her dream. In 1973 she became the first woman in Naval History to serve as an Intelligence Officer in a Navy aviation squadron and at her retirement in December 2001 she was the highest ranking African American female in the Navy.

Gloria Jackson is a great-granddaughter of Dr. Booker T. Washington and is the Founder and President of the Booker T. Washington Inspirational Network, Inc. It is Gloria’s belief that it was not by accident that she was born into the bloodline of Booker T. Washington. She, instead, believes that it was a God-given gift to provide her a platform from which to share with others the profound spiritual and economic wisdom and the liberating truth embodied in the words and actions of her great-grandfather.

Melissa Waddy-Thibodeaux (Actor/Playwright/Drama Instructor) has performed for over 40 years in various venues throughout the U.S. Her experience working with children and young adults, stems back to 1988 at the Ensemble Theatre where she worked closely with the late George Hawkins. She began the first children’s theater and began touring it in the early 1990’s to schools and libraries in and around the Houston area. Her main goal is to encourage reading in younger children and a sense of pride in the culture and the ancestors they do not know about who were kings and queens and saint, like Harriet Tubman. She began Flying Geese Productions in 1998 to teach history via theatrics.