Leroy Kennedy:
CLASS OF 1963
Sterling High SchoolClass of 1963
Sheffield, AL
Prairie View A&M UniversityClass of 1968
Prairie view, TX
Leroy's Story
Hello All,
Here's a copy of a resume used for a HistoryMaker related program for Black Male high school students. Please check out the historymakers.com, it is a program that collects the resumes and videos of Blacks who have contributed to the cause. Maybe you should be a HistoryMaker!!!
I used an existing HistoryMaker resume to format the resume below.
WmLeroyK
Resume of William L. Kennedy
Lifelong motivator and professional William Leroy Kennedy was born on August 30, 1945 in Sheffield, Alabama. His father was a residential building contractor and his mother was a nanny for the wealthiest family in the area. He graduated from Sterling High School, where he was Salutatorian and student body president.
Although he received a United Negro College Fund scholarship to attend the Tuskegee Institute, he decided to major in Architectural Engineering at Prairie View A&M College, Prairie View, Texas, where his uncle and aunt worked for the college. As the only family member that got to live with the family all four plus years, he ruined it for others.
Simply driving from North Alabama through Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and East Texas from 1963 to 1968 automatically meant that you participated in the Civil Rights movement. As graduation approached Mr. Kennedy decided to seek a job in the exciting aerospace industry. Fortunately the Boeing Company offered him related employment during his one and only college job interview.
His first assignment at Boeing was to work as a ground systems engineer during the static test firing of the Saturn 1C rocket, the first stage of the moon rocket in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He progressed to other engineering jobs at KPFF Engineering, McDonnell Douglas and Honeywell Aerospace.
After dealing with a personal highly visible fair accommodations discrimination case, Honeywell Aerospace asked Mr. Kennedy to become its Equal Employment/Affirmative Action (Diversity) Manager. The innovation and success of the program was spread throughout the Honeywell Corporation. Next he became EEO/AA Manager for Martin M...Expand for more
arietta Aerospace, Orlando, Florida. Again through forethought and innovation the program positively impacted the corporations approach to diversity.
In 1979 he joined Michelin Tire Corporation, Greenville, South Carolina where he spent seventeen years in various challenging assignments, which ended with serving as Plant Training Manager at a newly acquired Uniroyal/Goodrich plant in Scottsville, Virginia. The fifty year old plant then received its first ever National Safety Award and it was the first Uniroyal/Goodrich plant to put product in Michelin tires.
The next phase of Williams career involved becoming a financial advisor with MassMutual then Guardian Life. A lifelong desire to learn about and teach personal and family finance came into fruition in Richmond, Virginia, where Kennedy sold insurance and investment securities. "Getting to teach others about how to become more financially astute has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career."
While doing all of the above, Mr. Kennedy managed to help raise his daughter and son, six years apart, to become outstanding students with true senses of community and spirit. His children graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, Stanford, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. After meeting the smartest girl ever at age 15, he told his dads construction workers that "I'm going to marry the girl who lives in the pink house because her smarts and my strategy should produce some pretty sharp kids". Obviously, it worked out!
Numerous hours were spent working with the NAACP and Urban League and area churches. Mr. Kennedy also served as a volunteer mentor for career days, teaching motivation to fifth graders (he almost got held back in fifth grade), working with youth prisons, getting schools to hold PTA meetings in the public housing the kids were bused from and helping to start organizations that help the cause.
He is very high on using khanacademy.org as a tool that can help all, regardless of age or learning disability, succeed educationally. Every Black adult should visit the site is his motto.
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