Shreveport, LA – The New Orleans Convention Company, Inc. (NOCCI) held its third annual Bayou Classic University-Business Summit in Shreveport on Nov. 6 to discuss the future of business, education at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and hiring.
The summit, held in collaboration with the Minority Business Expo, features a half-day panel series with community, university and business leaders to gain solutions necessary to help grow and sustain business in north Louisiana. The workshop included three seminars on economic opportunities for business, workforce development and cyber technology.
“We needed to bring our corporate leaders to the table to have conversations with our college professors and our school leadership, so that we can determine what the next workforce has got to be,” Dottie Belletto, president of NOCCI, told The Gramblinite.
The presenters include: Otto Meyers, III, interim vice president of Advancement, Research and Economic Development at GSU; G.B. Cazes, vice president of Cyber Innovation Center; Eric England, executive port director at the Caddo-Bossier Parishes Port Commission; Alberta Green, director of information technology initiatives at North Louisiana Economic Partnership (NLEP); Krystle Grindley, director of university relations at SUSLA; John Grindley, executive director of Cohab; Larry Hall, president and CEO of Q-Net Information Services; Scott Martinez, president of NLEP; Jonathan Reynolds, chairman of Shreveport Bossier African American Chamber of Commerce; Janice Sneed, vice chancellor of community and workforce development at SUSLA; Jeffrey Thomas, executive director of Minority Supply Institute; Herman Vital, bureau chief of workforce development for the City of Shreveport; Mike Welch, managing director of ground services at FlyGlo; and Sonia Eubanks Wilson, business consultant/training coordinator at LSBDC.
The Bayou Classic University-Business Summit also attracted two groups of high school students. A group from Homer High School attended the workforce development seminar, while students from Fair Park High School attended the cyber technology session.
Terry Walker, Jr., a junior at Homer High School, said that the session helped guide him in the direction of his future career. Although he has yet to pick a major, Grambling is one of his top college choices.
According to Belletto, the workshop is beneficial to high school students, so they can start thinking about future careers and what to major in before they enter college.
This is the first year the summit has been held in Shreveport, instead of the Bayou Classic in New Orleans. The decision was made to allow people to attend the summit without cutting into their family time on Thanksgiving.
Instead, NOCCI decided to move the University-Business Summit to north Louisiana in Caddo Parish, and to move the summit throughout the state to target HBCU students, primarily Grambling State University and Southern University. A second summit is planned in south Louisiana in 2016.
*Special thanks to Kassandra Merritt of The Gramblinite for contributing to this report.
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