Legendary Actress Cicely Tyson, Civil Rights Hero Myrlie Evers Among Women of Power Legacy Award Honorees

Black Enterprise to Present Highest Recognition of Women's Achievement at the 2014 Women of Power Summit, hosted by State Farm Insurance, in Boca Raton, Fla.

NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- BLACK ENTERPRISE (BE) will present its highest recognition of women's achievement when it presents the Legacy Awards at the 2014 Women of Power Summit on February 26, 2014 in Boca Raton, Fla. The Women of Power Summit is the nation's No. 1 executive development and leadership conference for women of color, annually attracting more than 700 corporate executives, professionals and businesswomen from across the country. The Women of Power Summit, hosted by State Farm Insurance, will take place February 26-March 1, 2014 at the Boca Raton Resort and Club.

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The Women of Power Legacy Awards recognizes outstanding impact, achievement and leadership by women in business, the arts, education, government and other influential industries. Past Legacy Award recipients include luminaries such as the late National Council of Negro Women Chair and civil rights icon Dr. Dorothy Height; former Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Artistic Director Judith Jamison; Federal Express Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Cathy Ross and former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. In 2012, a Legacy Award was named for the late Barbara Graves, wife of Black Enterprise Founder Earl Graves Sr. and a former educator, to be presented annually for outstanding achievement and service in education and other areas of service to young people.

Honorees to be recognized at the 2014 Women of Power Summit Legacy Awards Dinner, hosted by PepsiCo, include:

Cicely Tyson, legendary award-winning actress, one of the greatest of her generation. Among her many achievements, Tyson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the Golden Globe Award for her performance as Rebecca Morgan in Sounder (1972). She starred in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), for which she won two Emmy Awards. Throughout her career she has been nominated for nine Primetime Emmy Awards, winning three. She starred on Broadway in The Trip to Bountiful as Carrie Watts, for which she won the Tony Award, Outer Critics Award, and Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Play.

Valerie Daniels-Carter, Co-Founder, President & CEO, V&J Holding Companies. Along with her brother, John Carter, Daniels-Carter founded Milwaukee-based V&J Holdings as a holding company for ownership of franchised quick-service restaurants, beginning with a single Burger King franchise in 1982. Today, V&J holdings employees 4,000 people and owns 36 Burger Kings and nearly 70 Pizza Huts, along with several Haagen-Dazs, Coffee Beanery and Aunty Anne's Pretzel stores (the last in partnership with NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal). V&J Holdings is one of the nation's largest black-owned companies, ranked at No. 33 on the 2013 Black Enterprise Industrial/Service 100 list. Daniels-Carter is recognized among the nation's most inspirational entrepreneurs.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, journalist, civil rights activist, former Chairwoman of the NAACP. Evers is the extraordinary civil rights activist and journalist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the murder of her civil rights activist husband Medgar Evers in 1963. She was also chairwoman of the NAACP, and published several books on topics related to civil rights and her husband's legacy. On January 21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama. As chair of the NAACP, Evers is credited with restoring both the image and the financial stability of the nation's most accomplished civil rights organization, earning the NAACP's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1998.

Julieanna Richardson, Founder and Executive Director, The HistoryMakers, America's largest African American video oral history collection. Richardson, who holds a J.D. degree from Harvard and once practiced corporate law, followed a unique path in heading up the largest national collection effort of African American video oral histories on record. With a diverse background in theatre, television production, and the cable television industries, she combined her various work experiences and her passion for history to conceptualize, found and build The HistoryMakers. The HistoryMakers is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit educational institution based in Chicago, committed to preserving, developing, and providing easy access to an internationally recognized archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories.

Marian Wright Edelman (Barbara Graves honoree), Founder and President of the Children's Defense Fund. Edelman, an American activist for the rights of children and against the Second Amendment, was the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She began practicing law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.'s Mississippi office, working on racial justice issues connected with the civil rights movement and representing activists during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund as a voice for poor, minority and disabled children. The organization has served as an advocacy and research center for children's issues, documenting the problems and possible solutions to children in need. To keep the agency independent, she saw that it was financed entirely with private funds. As founder, leader and principal spokesperson for the CDF, Mrs. Edelman worked to persuade Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are disabled, homeless, abused or neglected.

"Each year, the presentation of the Legacy Awards at our Women of Power Summit delivers power examples to live by and ever-higher levels of inspiration," says BLACK ENTERPRISE CEO Earl "Butch" Graves Jr. "This year's awards evening will again represent a perfect start to a powerful weekend for the hundreds of women who will gather for a weekend of meaningful purpose and professional excellence."

"We are thrilled that we will have this opportunity to pay well-deserved honor to women who are gifts to the world," says Black Enterprise Business Report television show Host Caroline Clarke, who along with Black Enterprise Editorial Director Sonia Alleyne, serves as a co-editorial director of the Women of Power Summit. "Their examples are proper tribute to the Legacy Award honorees before them, and powerful motivation for those to come."

Following the Women of Power Legacy Awards Dinner, more than 700 women will engage in 2 immersive days of executive development sessions and activities designed to train, equip and encourage industry leadership, career strategies and effective peak-performance and work-life balance techniques. Topics will include positioning for being recruited for corporate boards, identifying and securing a top-notch Career Advancement Team, driving organizational innovation and managing social media as a tool for professional advancement. Confirmed speakers include: Apple Vice President of Environmental Initiatives and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, Lardon & Associates Managing Director Donna James, State Farm Vice President of Human Resources Annette R. Martinez, Executive Leadership Council President & CEO Ron Parker, Spencer Stuart Partner Sharon Hall, and Nutrition Coach and Television Personality Rovenia M.  "Dr. Ro" Brock, Ph.D.

The host sponsor of the Women of Power Summit is State Farm Insurance. Presenting sponsors include EMC, Gatorade, Lays, Pepsi, Tropicana and Quaker. Platinum sponsors include FedEx, Hilton Worldwide, Abbott Vascular and Macy's; corporate sponsors include PepsiCo, Bank of America and Southwest Airlines.

For more information on the speakers and agenda of the 2014 Women of Power Summit, go to BlackEnterprise.com/wps. Also, for updates via Twitter and other social media sites, check the hash tags #BEWomenofPower and #BEWPS.

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