Diversity breakfast planned

Staff report

Youngstown

Gwendolyn E. Boyd, a prominent advocate for women’s equality and for the recruitment of black Americans into science and engineering, will give the keynote address at the 10th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Breakfast on Jan. 19.

The breakfast will be from 8 to 11 a.m. in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University.

Tickets are $5 for YSU students and $20 for non-YSU students, or $160 per table. Call 330-941-3516 or 330-941-2086. The YSU Office of Student Diversity Programs sponsors the event.

Boyd, a native of Montgomery, Ala., earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Alabama State University and a master’s in mechanical engineering from Yale University.

She joined the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in 1980 and is executive assistant to the chief of staff.

She was elected national president of Delta Sigma Theta, the nation’s largest black sorority. The organization has more than 950 chapters throughout the world and more than 250,000 college-educated black American women.

Boyd has been the recipient of the 1996 Black Engineer of the Year Public Service Award, has received congressional citations and acknowledgements in the Congressional Record and has been presented with keys from more than 20 cities.

Ebony magazine named Boyd among the “100+ Organization Leaders” in 2001 and 2002 and among the “100+ Most Influential Black Americans” in 2003 and 2004. In 2003 she was recognized by US Black Engineer magazine as one of the nation’s “Most Distinguished Black College and University Graduates.”