ynthia Augustine
Cynthia Augustine joined Time Warner Inc. as senior vice president for talent management. She will be responsible for people development, worldwide recruitment and executive search, and diversity. Augustine is a former senior media and human resources executive at the New York Times Co., serving as a member of the executive committee, president of the New York Times Broadcast Group and senior vice president of human resources. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Rutgers University School of Law.
Oliver Chukwuma
Oliver Chukwuma joined Valley National Bank as vice president, construction project manager, for the property management department in Wayne, N.J. He is responsible for managing construction projects and securing site and building designs from municipalities. Chukwuma holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects, the Construction Specification Institute and the American Society of Interior Designers.
Ronald A. LeGrand
The American Association of Retired Persons tapped Ronald A. LeGrand as its chief diversity officer. LeGrand joined AARP last December as director of African-American membership development. Previously, he headed RJ Nabisco’s minority affairs and businesses group. In his new position, he will be responsible for membership outreach efforts related to African-Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups. LeGrand holds a B.A. from Boston College and a J.D. from Boston College Law School.
Helene Cooper
Helene Cooper joined The New York Times as an editorial board member and assistant editorial page editor. Cooper was assistant bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau, focusing on international economics and foreign policy. She was the paper’s international economics reporter from 1999 to 2002, served in the London bureau, from 1997 to 1999, where she wrote about the European Monetary Union, and worked in the paper’s Washington and Atlanta bureaus writing about trade, politics, race and foreign policy from 1992 to 1997.
Reginald M. Turner
Reginald M. Turner was elected the 63rd president of the National Bar Association, Washington, D.C., the oldest and largest predominantly African-American association of lawyers. Turner is a member of the executive committee, the labor and employment practice group and the government policy and practice group of the Detroit law firm Clark Hill. He holds a law degree from University of Michigan Law School and a bachelor of science degree from Wayne State University.
Togo D. West Jr.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a leading policy research institution on African-American issues, named Togo D. West Jr. to be its president and CEO, effective December 1. A former secretary of the Army and a former secretary of veterans affairs, West served in three presidential administrations. Most recently, he was of counsel at the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling.
Robert S. Browne
Robert S. Browne, economist, philanthropist, foreign aid advisor, anti-Vietnam war activist, professor, writer and founder of three Black self-help organizations, died of heart failure in Rockland County, N.Y. Through his writing, activism and speeches, Browne helped shape the discourse on Black America in the 1960s and 1970s as well as that on the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam war.
Ellis L. Marsalis Sr.
Ellis L. Marsalis Sr., patriarch of a world-famous jazz family, died in New Orleans. Marsalis’s son Ellis Jr. is a prominent New Orleans pianist and professor of music who mentored his own sons: Wynton, the trumpeter, Branford, the saxophonist, Delfeayo, the trombonist, and Jason, the drummer. In 1936, Ellis Sr. became the first Black manager of an Esso service station in New Orleans. He owned a suburban motel where dignitaries such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., New York Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall stayed during the Civil Rights movement.
Carl E. Morris
Carl E. Morris, the first executive director of the National Association of Black Journalists and the first minority affairs director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, died of complications after heart surgery. Morris advocated for the inclusion of minorities on the boards of national news organizations and for more diversity in newsrooms. He founded the National Association of Minority Media Executives, where he published a nationwide directory of minority media executives and became a watchdog for minority hiring practices in the media.