Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine to give $70 million to USC for new academy

Hip-hop star Dr. Dre and music mogul Jimmy Iovine are donating $70 million to USC for a new academy that they say will give students the tools they need to break into the rapidly changing music industry.

Scheduled to be announced by Dre (whose given name is Andre Young) and Iovine on Wednesday in Santa Monica, the gift will establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation. The academy will open with an inaugural class of 25 students in fall 2014.

"The vision and generosity of Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young will profoundly influence the way all of us perceive and experience artistic media," USC President C.L. Max Nikias said in a statement. "Our goal is to ensure that the academy is the most collaborative educational program in the world."


USC receives $5-million gift to endow community service program

Gift to USC continues a legacy of mentoring

Beats by Dr. Dre will move headquarters to Culver City

Dr. Dre tops Forbes' highest-paid musicians list

Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine give $70 million to create new USC academy
Ads by Google

Dre, Iovine and Nikias declined to be interviewed before the announcement, a USC spokesman said.

An unspecified portion of the $70-million donation will go toward construction of facilities that will house the academy. Students, who can earn an undergraduate degree from the academy, will use existing facilities while new ones are being built.

The four-year program will feature four core curriculum areas: arts and entrepreneurship; technology, design and marketability; concept and business platform; and creating a prototype. It aims to foster entrepreneurship that brings students' entertainment, technology and business skills into play. Instruction will involve engineering, computer science, fine arts, graphic design, business and leadership training.

That training will come from faculty at USC's Thornton School of Music, Roski School of Fine Arts, Marshall School of Business and Viterbi School of Engineering, as well as "industry icons and innovators as visiting faculty and guest speakers," according to USC's statement.

"Academy students will have the freedom to move easily from classroom to lab, from studio to workshop individually or in groups, and blow past any academic or structural barriers to spontaneous creativity," Erica Muhl, dean of the fine arts school, said in a statement. Muhl will serve as the first director of the new academy.

The outline of the program appears to create an academic counterpart to the street-smart path Iovine and Young have traveled in building their careers.

As Dr. Dre, Young first came to fame as a member of the Compton hard-core rap group N.W.A and went on to become one of hip-hop's most respected performers and producers, mentoring Eminem as well as 50 Cent, the Game and other rappers.

Before Iovine founded Interscope Records in 1990, he also was an in-demand producer and engineer for hit recordings by John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and other rock and pop acts. At Interscope, which became Interscope Geffen A&M Records, of which he is now chairman, Iovine has been at the helm of the label behind such music-world successes as U2, the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga. Iovine remains a co-owner of Interscope with its parent company, Universal Music Group.

When Dre asked Iovine several years ago whether he should endorse a line of high-end athletic shoes, Iovine famously replied, "Speakers — not sneakers."

That led them to create the Beats by Dr. Dre line of headphones that now accounts for more than half the consumer market for high-end headphones. Their Santa Monica-based Beats Electronics company has since expanded with the Dre Beats laptop, high-quality ear buds, speakers for car stereo systems and other products. The company's annual sales in 2011 were $500 million.

Forbes put Dre's current net worth at $350 million, ranking him third — behind Sean "Diddy" Combs and Jay-Z — on the magazine's 2013 list of the wealthiest hip-hop stars.

Celebrity NetWorth puts Iovine, a regular guest judge in recent seasons of "American Idol," at $700 million. Forbes in 2011 estimated Iovine's net worth at $400 million.

USC has a history of cultivating strategic relationships with the entertainment industry and a number of its leading practitioners. In 2009, for example, George Lucas' Lucasfilm Foundation gave $75 million toward construction of new facilities for the USC School of Cinematic Arts, plus $100 million for the school's endowment. Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Disney have also donated to the school.

C.R. Patterson & Sons Company

The C.R. Patterson & Sons Company was a carriage building firm, and the first African American-owned automobile manufacturer. The company was founded by Charles Richard Patterson, who was born into slavery in April 1833 on a plantation in Virginia. His parents were Nancy and Charles Patterson. Patterson escaped from slavery in 1861, heading west and settling in Greenfield, Ohio around 1862.

At some point after his arrival in Ohio, Patterson went to work as a blacksmith for the carriage building business, Dines and Simpson. In 1865 he married Josephine Utz, and had five children from 1866 to 1879. In 1873, Patterson went into partnership with J.P. Lowe, another Greenfield-based carriage manufacturer. Over the next twenty years, Patterson and Lowe developed a highly successful carriage-building business.

In 1893 Patterson bought out J.P. Lowe’s share of the business and reorganized it as C.R. Patterson & Sons Company. The company built 28 types of horse-drawn vehicles and employed approximately 10-15 individuals. While the company managed to successfully market its equine-powered carriages and buggies, the dawn of the automobile was rapidly approaching.

Charles Patterson died in 1910, leaving the successful carriage business to his son Frederick who in turn initiated the conversion of the company from a carriage business into an automobile manufacturer. The first Patterson-Greenfield car debuted in 1915 and was sold for $850. With a four-cylinder Continental engine, the car was comparable to the contemporary Ford Model T. The Patterson-Greenfield car may, in fact, have been more sophisticated than Ford’s car, but C.R. Patterson & Sons never matched Ford’s manufacturing capability.

Estimates of Patterson-Greenfield car production vary, but it is almost certain that no more than 150 vehicles were built. The company soon switched to production of truck, bus, and other utility vehicle bodies which were installed atop chassis made by major auto manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors. Its school bus bodies in particular became popular as Midwestern school districts began to convert from horse-drawn to internal-combustion-fired transportation by 1920.

Around 1920, the company reorganized as the Greenfield Bus Body Company but after ten years of steady, if unspectacular growth, the Great Depression sent the company into a downward spiral. Frederick Patterson died in 1932, and the company began to disintegrate in the late 1930s. Around 1938, the company moved to Gallipolis, Ohio, changing its name again to the Gallia Body Company in an attempt to restart its prior success.  The attempt failed and the company permanently closed its doors in 1939.  Like many other small auto manufacturers, the company was unable to compete with Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, and other large automobile manufacturers.

No Patterson-Greenfield automobiles are known to have survived to the present, but some C.R. Patterson & Sons carriages and buggies are extant.

Source: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/c-r-patterson-sons-company-1893-1939

BLACK PAST.ORG: Remembered & Reclaimed

BlackPast.org, an online reference center makes available a wealth of materials on African American history in one central location on the Internet. These materials include an online encyclopedia of nearly 3,000 entries, the complete transcript of nearly 300 speeches by African Americans, other people of African ancestry, and those concerned about race, given between 1789 and 2012, over 140 full text primary documents, bibliographies, timelines and six gateway pages with links to digital archive collections, African and African American museums and research centers, genealogical research websites, and more than 200 other website resources on African American and global African history. Additionally, 100 major African American museums and research centers and over 400 other website resources on black history are also linked to the website, as are nine bibliographies listing more than 5,000 major books categorized by author, title, subject, and date of publication. It also features a Perspectives Online Magazine which features commentary of important but little known events in black history often written by the individuals who participated in or witnessed them.  To date more than 100 articles have appeared.  The compilation and concentration of these diverse resources allows BlackPast.org to serve as the "Google" of African American history.

BlackPast.org brings the resources of African American history into every classroom in the world. It also makes every computer, regardless of its location, a classroom in African American history.

BlackPast.org is dedicated to providing the inquisitive public with comprehensive, reliable, and accurate information concerning the history of African Americans in the United States and people of African ancestry in other regions of the world. It is the aim of the founders and sponsors to foster understanding through knowledge in order to generate constructive change in our society.

BlackPast.org brings the resources of African American history into every classroom in the world. It also makes every computer, regardless of its location, a classroom in African American history.

Source: http://www.blackpast.org/

Twins to Graduate With Identical Honors – Valedictorian

Identical twins Kirstie and Kristie Bronner share practically everything: hobbies, favorite colors, favorite foods, and clothes.  But now they can share the title of valedictorian.

Kirstie and Kristie, both 22, from Atlanta, Ga., will graduate May 19 as the first co-valedictorians who are also identical twins at Spelman College, in Atlanta.

“I don’t think we even thought about the possibility of it,” Kristie told ABCNews.com.

“We actually have prayed about it,” Kirstie said.  “Lord help us to make 4.0s all the way through college.”

The two have the same major—music—and both have perfect 4.0 GPAs.  The sisters managed to keep up their grades while juggling Spelman College’s glee club and volunteering at their father’s church, Word of Faith Family Worship Cathedral.

“I am extremely proud of them.  They have gotten that particular status the old fashion way,” their father, Bishop Dale Bronner, told ABCNews.com. “Their greatest asset is their discipline. They got their brilliance from the mother, but they got their discipline from their father.”
“We prayed harder than everybody else and worked harder,” Kirstie said.

For the twins, their achievement meant having to sacrifice going out on the weekends occasionally. “Our friends kind of just stopped asking,” Kristie said.

The sisters attribute most of their achievements to their relationship and their similarities. “Our values are the same,” Kristie said. “Our drive is the same. We spend a lot of time together so we always studied together.”

In fact, their personalities are so similar that the two said that they’ve had many occurrences where they’ve written papers or taken tests and had the same thesis points or wrong answers.

Identical twins Kirstie and Kristie Bronner are graduating as co-valedictorians with identical 4.0 GPAs from Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. (Courtesy Kirstie Bronner)

Kirstie and Kristie have one distinction that helps tell them apart. Kirstie said, “I’m a little more direct. She’s a little more sugarcoating.”

While Kristie admits that sharing so much may get on their nerves at times, it’s their teamwork that makes their dynamic successful.  ”In college, we discovered how different we are,” Kristie said.  ” Our differences actually compliment each other.  It helps us to get things done faster.”

Kirstie added, ” I think of of the biggest things that comes between twins is competition.  Although we have our arguments, I think that one way that we help to eliminate competition is to be mindful of it and be secure in our individual identities.”

One way the twins eliminate getting compared is by dressing alike. “You can’t say one twin is the more stylish twin if we have on the same thing,” Kirstie said.

After graduating, Kirstie and Kristie plan on continuing on the same path as youth counselors, youth event coordinators, and directors of music at the Word of Faith Family Worship Cathedral.  Achieving the title of valedictorian wasn’t enough for the girls.  They also plan on writing a book with scheduling tips and releasing a gospel album.

“We don’t think we achieved it based upon genius, but based upon strategy,” Kirstie said.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/05/twins-to-graduate-with-identical-honors-valedictorian/

Black Startup

Our platform is a new tool to generate financial resources to fund ideas and to address systemic social problems facing African-Americans on the local, national, and international level. Clearly, a platform that is operated by an honest broker will facilitate trust. But our platform will also lower transaction costs associated with raising capital. We will be the meeting place where those with good ideas can expose themselves to thousands/millions of potential investors at almost no monetary cost. Also, investors will have the opportunity to contribute to projects that they would have never known about without visiting our website. Finally, the affinity and commonality amongst the online community on our platform will lead to substantial activity and transactions on our platform as opposed to platforms that are not targeted towards a specific community.

Our crowdfunding platform specifically dedicated to the African-American community addresses the lack of African-Americans that are participating in the crowdfunding market because we can  market directly to the community. Furthermore, we can take advantage of established networks/groups  to build our online minority investing community. The idea is for our online community to be as reflective of the “on-ground” African-American community as possible.

Crowdfunding is beginning to move from a marketplace dominated by “one size fits all” style  platforms (indiegogo.com/wefunder.com) to more dedicated, topic-orieted/industry focused platforms. The idea is that by targeting the audience, the marketplace becomes more efficient because of group affinity. Essentially, crowdfunding works partially because it allows one to leverage social networking to get ideas funded through one’s existing relationships, one’s extended network, and the extended network of those one is connected to. Therefore, the more closely one is tied to the network of someone that is seeking funding, the more likely one is to give.

Our platform will be aligned with a network of people that already have a shared group identity, but it will additionally be able to tie into existing groups, organizations, and networks that already exist in the African-American community (both on the ground and online). This is what we mean when we assert that targeting can lead to increased activity and efficiency on a crowdfunding platform. Currently, there is a crowdfunding platform that is targeted to focus on ideas started by Jewish people or designed to advance Jewish interests. However, there is no platform for African-Americans. By focusing on a particular demographic group we will  benefit from the efficiency that targeting allows for.

Our platform/project can be used as a tool to increase education in the community on the benefits of investing, which addresses the over consumption of consumer goods and underuse of investing vehicles within the African-American community. To reach many of these goals, our group will benefit from partnerships with key organizations in the minority business landscape such as Black Enterprise magazine and the National Black MBA Association.

Finally, we address the unmet needs related to the changing dynamics of the regulation of the crowdfunding industry by designing an internet funding portal that can take advantage of the JOBS Act reforms.

http://www.blackstartup.com/

Pretty Brown Girl Movement: Changing Girls One Doll at a Time

She had blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes. She looked nothing like little Aliya and Laila Crowley, who were affectionately called “pretty brown girls” since birth by their father Corey. Still, the then five-year-old and six-year-old sisters and their African American friends wanted her: the pretty white doll.

Shocked and disheartened by what should have been a fun birthday party at an American Girl Doll store, where even if little Aliya and Laila wanted to choose an African American doll, their only option would have been a freed slave. Sheri and Corey Crowley decided that they needed to do something to make their girls and girls around the country see that their brown was beautiful.

However, the incident in the doll store was only a small part of a larger issue the Crowleys were seeing in their daughters. After moving to a predominately white neighborhood outside of Detroit, Sheri began to notice that Laila was beginning to develop identity and self-esteem issues from being the only African American student in her class.

“She started asking me for products that she would see sold on TV, so if it was a Pantene commercial where she would see long blonde hair similar to her table mates,  she would ask me to buy it thinking that it would change her hair,” Sheri explained.

Combining the concern of their young daughter’s growing identity issues and the incident at the doll store, Sheri and her husband decided to create a doll.

The couple morphed their daughter’s faces together to create the first ever “Pretty Brown Girl Doll.” While waiting for the doll to be manufactured, the Crowley’s established a hugely successful t-shirt line adorned with the slogan “Pretty Brown Girl Movement.”  Over 500 girls attended a celebration to honor ‘Pretty Brown Girls’ and had real conversations about having self-love.

After receiving such high praise for the event and t-shirts, the Crowley’s quickly learned that their family was not the only ones dealing with issues of identity. People across the country began to call the Crowleys asking how they could contribute to the organization or how they could duplicate their mission in their hometowns.

Overnight, what started as a tool to remind their girls to love their own brown skin became a movement for every girl and woman across the country.

The outpouring of support made Sheri realize that the “Pretty Brown Girl Movement” was filling a big void.  She noted, “That’s when we could see the need… there really is no formal platform that exists that addresses skin tone and self-esteem, particularly to girls.”

She went on to explain further, “Even though this is such an elephant in the room, everybody that’s a person of color goes through something related to skin tone. There absolutely wasn’t anything in place to facilitate a conversation about what this means to be a pretty brown girl.”

Not surprisingly, the movement is supported by 60% women who are looking to help out the young women in their lives as well as themselves. Many of these women exclaim, “I needed to have this when I was growing up and I’m going to wear my shirt in corporate America, and I’m a pretty brown girl and I need to tell myself that now!”

The Pretty Brown Girl Foundation uses their dolls, t-shirts and community-based programs to establish a platform where girls and women can discuss the realities of being a brown girl and a brown woman in America.

In an ideal world, what does Sheri hope a little girl will gain from the “Pretty Brown Girl Movement”?:
“For girls everywhere to know that they were created perfectly in the image of God. And for them to celebrate and love the skin they’re in. …To really understand that she is special and that she doesn’t need to look like anyone but herself. When you’re comfortable in the skin you’re in and you can go throughout your day and feel that power. Power in knowing that and having that self-confidence and self-esteem when you look in the mirror and you see your face that you’re excited about your own reflection and every girl deserves to have that special feeling.”

On February 23, 2013, the foundation held the first ever “International Pretty Brown Girl Day”, sponsored by General Motors, which was established  to celebrate everything that Sheri mentioned above.

For more information about how you can purchase a doll or get involved in the organization, visit prettybrowngirl.com

SAVING AMERICA’S BLACK BOYS LAUNCHES AT SXSWEDU

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a massive conference where collaboration is king, and big ideas emerge. It is the innovation and technology platform where Twitter and Foursquare were launched. Starting in early March, more than 3,000 reporters from around the globe will descend upon Austin, Texas, America’s fastest growing city and one of the nation’s major hubs of tech innovation. Many journalists are hoping to find and report on the next big idea. They won’t have long to wait.

More than 2,000 miles from Austin, something big is already happening in Portland, Oregon that will debut on a national stage at SXSWedu. It’s called “Inclusive Competitiveness.”

The shifting demographics of the U.S. require metric tools and lexicon that offer insight and understanding into how well metropolitan regions perform economically across a diverse landscape of residents. Inclusive Competitiveness measures the economic performance of diverse populations in innovation ecosystems and clusters, emerging technology sectors and other areas critical to U.S. economic competitiveness.

Inclusive Competitiveness is the brainchild of Johnathan Holifield, a co-founder of The America21 Project (America21) and Vice President of Inclusive Competitiveness at Nortech, a tech-based economic development powerhouse covering 21 counties in Northeast Ohio. Holifield, who was recently highlighted in Forbes, will sit on a panel I organized for opening day at SXSWedu titled, “Saving America’s Black Boys.”

Grammy award-winning music producer, Jermaine Dupri, will join Holifield on the SXSWedu panel along with Chad Womack, Ph.D., National Director of STEM Education for the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), and Jim Staton, a successful North Carolina businessman whose parents were sharecroppers.

Saving America’s Black Boys Through Inclusive Competitiveness

The next day, on March 5 at the George Washington Carver Museum, in partnership with Tammara McDonald, founder and president of Game Changerz, Inc. and vice president Diatra James, along with Jim Staton Jr. of Top Flight LLC, I will launch a national campaign at the Saving America’s Black Boys (SABB) Solutions Summit.

The SABB Solutions Summit is a historic gathering of more than 100 national, regional and local leaders, celebrity influencers and pro athletes who seek to develop innovative solutions that bridge the education divide and bolster economic competitiveness in local regions across America through the framework of inclusion.

The SABB Solutions Summit is the launch pad for a national campaign and series of Solutions Summits across the nation designed to catalyze an unprecedented 21st century national economic movement built upon the principles of inclusive competitiveness. Holifield will keynote the Austin SABB Solutions Summit.

Black Innovation Group (BIG)

The proposed outcome of the Austin SABB Solutions Summit will be the initial phase of developing a permanent “Black Innovation Group” (BIG) comprised of local leaders representing various parts of Austin’s innovation ecosystem — from the pipeline of STEM education to the productivity of high-growth entrepreneurship and access to capital. These leaders will devise generational economic strategies, plans and programs based upon a framework I call, “Pipeline2Productivity,” targeting America’s Black boys — one of the most disconnected demographic sectors of our society. The BIG will ultimately build an opportunity pipeline that connects to the local innovation ecosystem and the five-year goals established by the region’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS) plan.

Pipeline2Productivity and Urban Innovation

The current test phase of this new Pipeline2Productivity framework is Portland, Oregon, where the nonprofit, Ideal Portland, is partnering with the Portland Development Commission, the city’s economic development agency, and the Office of Mayor Charlie Hales to conduct the work of research, collaboration and convening the nation’s first inclusive Urban Innovation Roundtable (UIR) to develop an inclusive entrepreneurship action plan for the region.

While the SABB Campaign is more narrowly focused on the work of investing in the education and entrepreneurial ingenuity of America’s Black boys, Portland is investing in a broader inclusive innovation landscape through development of the UIR.

I first introduced the idea for development of a UIR on Nov. 4, 2011 during a gathering of black leaders hosted by Sharon Jones, Dean of the Shiley Engineering Department at the University of Portland. The concept is based upon the core economic philosophy of Holifield’s inclusive competitiveness. Essentially, investing in cultivating and nurturing local talent across all racial groups will result in: an increase in qualified workers for an increasingly tech-based workforce and more tech startup entrepreneurs creating jobs and strengthening the economic competitiveness of the local innovation economy.

Investing in Black Innovators

The latter point is key: Nearly all net new jobs, since 1980, are the result of startups (according to the Kauffman Foundation). Yet, while Black entrepreneurs grew 60 percent from 2002-2007 to a historic high level of 1.9 million Black-owned businesses, 1.8 million were sole proprietors with zero employees. And total revenue from all Black-owned businesses amounted to less than 1 percent of GDP.

Then, the economy collapsed.

Today, if the creative entrepreneurial spirit of Black boys is to be cultivated and nurtured for significant future contribution to the job creation arena, it will require deliberate long-term investment. The SABB Campaign seeks to inform leaders, influencers and stakeholders of the opportunities inherent in cultivating an entrepreneurial infrastructure and resource pipeline that invests in the creativity of America’s Black boys, and inculcates a culture of innovation in Black communities.

Portland: Center of Tech Inclusion Universe

Last year, Oregon Business magazine ran a cover story on me and The America21 Project, a nonprofit I co-founded with Holifield and Womack. The prescient cover read: “The Next Tech Revolution.” That revolution begins with STEM education, which is key to an inclusive economic transformation. SXSWedu is the introduction of Inclusive Competitiveness on a national stage. Portland is the petri dish where it is currently being developed.

Portland is also the focus of the Activate Local Communities Across America Initiative (ALC), born out of a series of Tech Inclusion Roundtables (TIR) with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), led by President Obama’s Chief Technology Officer Todd Park. A convening of the first TIR took place last summer, initiated by Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, Kapor Capital and co-founder of the Level Playing Field Institute (with his wife, Freada Kapor Klein).

Microsoft Research partnered with America21 during the TIR to establish a framework for deploying the ALC Initiative. Portland is one of three pilot cities whose mayors committed to the process (along with Chicago and Cambridge, Mass). Portland will activate its local communities by convening a TIR and catalyze the process of forming a permanent UIR through collaboration with America21 and Ideal Portland.

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber recognizes the key to Oregon’s economic future is inclusion. At the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Conference in Portland last November, Kitzhaber held a private “ScaleUp” rally at the headquarters of famed marketers, Wieden + Kennedy, for national and local leaders to gather and start the discussion of breaking down walls of competitive silos and working together to provide needed resources on national, state and regional levels. These resources can be targeted to scale up local economies by making investments in inclusion processes, policies and people that serve to strengthen the economic competitiveness of the overall region.

Portland Development Commission

No inclusive innovation framework or economic transformation can be developed without strong support from local institutional powers. The Portland Development Commission (PDC) has supported the idea of establishing an inclusive economic ecosystem since the day I promoted the concept in a keynote address to 1,000 attendees at The Skanner MLK Breakfast Celebration more than a year ago.
PDC Executive Director Patrick Quinton is also supporting the SABB Solutions Summit in Austin as a sponsor and bringing a delegation of Black tech entrepreneurs from Portland, including Portland’s Chief Technology Officer Ben Berry, and Ideal Portland founder Dwayne Johnson, to offer insight into their experiences in Portland’s developing inclusive innovation ecosystem.
PDC will also promote the recently launched StartupPDX Challenge as an opportunity for entrepreneurs from underserved populations to access the city’s startup ecosystem. Challenge winners will receive free rent for a year, a $10,000 grant, and in-kind services from the region’s top professional firms and accelerators.

Inclusive Competitiveness: America’s Next BIG Idea

Starting March 4, the nation will turn its attention to SXSWedu which kicks off the series of conferences that comprise the total SXSW experience, where more than 65,000 attended last year. SXSWedu, with Bill Gates delivering the keynote address, targets the fastest growing innovation landscape, education.

There’s no doubt that shifting racial demographics across America have turned the nation’s attention to the challenge of closing education and economic gaps, and adequately preparing historically targeted and disconnected sectors of society to participate and be competitive in a 21st century knowledge-based, tech-driven global innovation economy. The ideas introduced at SXSWedu promise to be innovative, with many focused on strengthening the landscape of America’s global economic competitiveness through the prism of education.
The biggest idea set to launch at SXSWedu is one that already has traction from the White House to the Silicon Forest: Inclusive Competitiveness.