Where Are They Now? BDPA Cleveland Chapter Presidents

BDPA Cleveland chapter was founded in November 1980.  The idea of BDPA was brought to Cleveland by Norman Mays.   Norman served as president of the BDPA Washington DC chapter when he moved to Cleveland in 1980.   He found like-minded people in Cleveland who wanted an organization that would help advance the careers of African Americans in the information technology industry.

Gerry McClamy, Norman Mays, Vivian Wilson

I would love to hear from someone that could tell me the names of the other folks who joined Norman Mays as the initial charter members of the BDPA Cleveland chapter.   Do you know any of those names?

Their decision to create a chapter was a good one as evidenced by the fact that BDPA Cleveland was named 'Chapter of the Year' in 1986 and 1987.  BDPA Cleveland always believed in the concept of 'One BDPA'.   One of my earliest memories of the cooperation and support by BDPA Cleveland was at a regional conference that they hosted in 1989.  I remember traveling there with others from BDPA Detroit chapter.  We learned a great deal about how to successfully build a local chapter ... lessons that we put into practice immediately on our return to Detroit.

One of my two favorite people in BDPA is from Cleveland -- Vivian Wilson.  I served as National Vice President during Vivian's term as national president.  Did you know that Vivian is the only person in the 35+ years of BDPA history to be elected National President without ever serving as a local chapter president?   She was the BDPA Cleveland chapter vice president when she was elected to serve as our national president in the early 1990s.   Vivian earned a number of national awards over the years: Member of the Year (1986), President's Award (1988) and the BDPA Excellence in Leadership Award (1992),


Other award winners from BDPA Cleveland chapter include: Gerry McClamy (Member of the Year, 1995), Willard Brown (Outstanding Chapter President, 2006) and Monica Bowe (Member of the Year, 2010).

It would be great to hear from our past, current and future BDPA Cleveland chapter presidents. Here is the list as best we can tell:

Ken Wilson

• Norman Mays (1980-1982)
• Barbara Whitfield (1983-1984)
• Ken Wilson (1985-1989, 1995, 2008-2009)
• George Williams (1990-1992)
• Crystal Kelson Farmer (1993-1994)
• Judy Williams (1996)
• Bruce Keene (1997-2002)
• Beverly Peterson (2003-2004)
• Willard Brown (2005-2007)
• Henry Wiggins (2010-2011)
• Demo Solaru (2012-2014)

It is worth noting that Norman Mays and George Williams are past BDPA Cleveland chapter presidents who served for a number of years as the national BDPA president.   Monica Bowe is the only other BDPA Cleveland chapter member (to my knowledge) to serve on the national BDPA executive committee.   Monica served as both our acting VP-Finance (2010) and our Outside Director (2010-2011).

The chapter hosted the national BDPA Technology Conference in 1994 ('Unleashing the Power of a Creative People').

The chapter competes regularly in the national high school computer competition (HSCC). BDPA Cleveland chapter has never won the national HSCC championship.  However, they did finish as high as 3rd place in 1990.  That 1990 HSCC team consisted of four remarkable high school students: Ronald Banks, Phillip Chow, James Gombas and Justin Polburn.

We've mentioned alot of names in this blog post.   The question remains:

Where are they now?

Related articles

• History of BDPA Awards (1986-2011)

Take Five: Monica Bowe (Cleveland)

Monica Bowe joined the BDPA leadership team last year when she was selected as national VP-Finance to close out 2009. She agreed to serve in 2010-2011 as an Outside Director on the national BDPA board of directors.

We are very pleased that Monica agreed to participate in our Take Five interview series.

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1. How did you get involved in working with BDPA? - A very good friend and colleague introduced me to the organization. I describe myself as a finance professional with an affinity for technology. She knows this and made the match. It’s been a very rewarding experience thus far.


2. What is the most rewarding aspect of working with BDPA? - It is absolutely the youth. It is so all about the kids. BDPA does really wonderful work with SITES and HSCC. I love that BDPA provides an avenue for minority youth to segue into the technology positions where they are sorely underrepresented. I love that they will have a say in what the next technologies will be and that BDPA provides some of the tools to get them there.


3. Tell us about a defining moment in your life? - The loss of my son a year and a half ago. Like most, I was all about the corporate climb, getting extremely bent out of shape about trivial corporate matters, planning my next steps on the corporate ladder. Losing my son taught me two things: 1. Through Christ, I am much stronger than I ever thought myself to be and 2.Sweating the small stuff is a waste of energy.
   
   Sometimes I still struggle with sweating the small things, but I remind myself that life has much bigger issues with which to contend.


4. Who is your hero and why? - It’s so cliché, but my mother is truly my hero. She was a single mom and cleaned houses to put food on the table. She made sure that she instilled good Christian values in me and encouraged me that I could be anything that I wanted. Through her love and support, I have been blessed as an educated Black woman with a good degree of success thus far in my career. I am eternally grateful to her.


5. Any advice for people considering donation to BETF? - Whomever you choose to give to, give with your heart. Find those organizations that mean the most to you. BDPA and BETF are great because they empower our youth to go out and impact the world we live in by learning, discovering and creating the next generation of technologies. How amazing is that?

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BDPA needs to find brothers and sisters like Monica to serve it at both local and national level. I look forward to meeting Monica in person at some point in the future.