Honoree: Jennifer Beard

WANDA DILLARD: The person I'm going to talk about today is Jennifer Beard. Jennifer is program manager for The Women's Place. My name is Wanda Dillard. I work for the Ohio State University Medical Center as director of community development. I met Jennifer as a young woman many years ago when she worked for the Health Department, and I worked at Riverside doing community development. One of the things I enjoy about Jennifer is that she will do whatever it takes to get the job done. She has a lot of tenacity as far as completing things and over the years I have watched her grow, from the Health Department to the Department of Development to now working at The Women's Place. I'm just amazed at her growth. It's interesting when you see a younger woman and you're able to watch her grow into a wonderful, wonderful woman and Jennifer has made that journey very well.

I think she has learned a lot, I think that working in The Women's Place- I've been in different group sessions with her- and she does such a wonderful job facilitating, she's right on point and she's able to take and initiate things. One of the things that I can say about Jennifer...we started out working with a black women's health project and she was the president of the organization for a while and she took us to another level, had us looking at different things. We did the Walk for Wellness, which was an event that was taking place in Columbus for black women to get healthy and Jennifer led that whole project. She was able to get grant money to take and help us do that project. In that black women's health project, I used to watch her and I am so proud of her as a woman and all I could say is she is one of those phenomenal women and I always think about Maya Angelou, who said: "And still I rise, and still I rise." Jennifer is definitely rising to be the cream of the crop and she is one of my sheroes, and I really enjoy watching her be the person she is.

Transcription by Transcribe OSU