Valley native, now with Disney, to speak to KSU grads

STAFF REPORT

KENT — Youngstown native Robert Billingslea, vice president of corporate urban affairs and development for The Walt Disney Co., comes back to Northeast Ohio this week as a commencement speaker at Kent State University.

Billingslea, who now resides in Windermere, Fla., will speak at the afternoon commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center. About 800 degrees will be granted for graduates of the College of the Arts, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Communication and Information and the College of Nursing.

Billingslea, a 1964 Kent graduate, was born and reared in Youngstown. He began his career with Disney as a senior personnel representative at Disneyland Park and advanced through positions in Employee Relations and Human Resources at the Walt Disney World Resort and The Walt Disney Co. to pioneer Disney’s corporate urban-affairs operation in the late 1990s.

For more than a decade, he has been an adviser to Disney’s senior management on diversity-related issues and other areas of social concern. He is responsible for helping to establish and maintain strong relationships with diverse constituents nationwide in support of the corporate mission to include diversity in all aspects of its business.

Billingslea has served on the boards and in leadership roles with such diverse organizations as the NAACP’s Special Contributions Fund Board, Image Awards and ACT-SO Committees; the Bill Dickey Scholarship Association; Bethune-Cookman University; Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida; Metropolitan Orlando Urban League; League of United Latin American Citizens; 100 Black Men of Orlando; United Negro College Fund; Children’s Defense Fund; Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; the National Black MBA Association’s Strategic Business Alliance; and the League of Black Women.

He earned a bachelor’s in sociology from Kent State and has served on Kent’s Centennial Committee and was a member of the university’s Capital Campaign Fund Committee. He was also among the first alumni to receive Kent State’s President’s Social Responsibility Award for work in developing programs and activities that support positive development of underrepresented individuals.

Billingslea and his wife, Deidre, have one son and two grandchildren.