Success Secrets, Blackmoney, Jazz Management define diversity dividend

SAN JOSE -- When the new editor of the San Jose Business Journal walked into a breakfast at the San Jose Athletic Club in 1987, he was surprised that four of the dozen technology business leaders welcoming him were African-American.

"They were pretty shocked that I was black too," recalls the author of Success Secrets of Black Executives (ASPIRE SAN FRANCISCO), first  African-American to edit a business newspaper.

John William Templeton soon organized a group called the Black Executive Forum, where one could only gain admittance with budget authority in excess of $10 million.  More than 200 eventually showed up for the monthly meetings.

ELC seeks 500 more C-level, 200 more board members in Fortune 500

WASHINGTON -- The Executive Leadership Council wants corporate boards to wake up and smell the coffee from the Nov. 6 election results.   A changing electorate is also a sign that business executive suites should change as well.

Second term extends business opportunities

CHICAGO -- The reelection of President Barack Obama offered an unexpected plug for serial inventor Dr. Juan Gilbert, project manager for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's design of a universal voting machine.  The lone unscripted remark in his acceptance speech, just after noting the long lines at polling booths, was "we need to do something about that."

One planet, one vote

There are African-Americans who did not vote in the 1876 election who never again got the opportunity.   It had only been six years since the 15th Amendment affirmed their right to vote.  The Hayes-Tilden Compromise that resulted from the close election meant a reversal of the gains of the Civil War and abolition movement. Forty black congressmen declined to zero by 1905.  Jim Crow held forth for 90 years until the Voting Rights Act of 1968.