2020 HONOREES
WQED- Corporate Leadership Award
WQED was an experiment in educational community-supported television that was the forerunner to PBS. Today, WQED is a multimedia powerhouse that is as much a part of Pittsburgh as the three rivers. WQED is WQED-TV (PBS); WQED World; WQED Create; WQED Showcase; WQED PBS KIDS Channel; Classical WQED-FM 89.3/Pittsburgh; Classical WQEJ-FM 89.7/Johnstown; the Pittsburgh Concert Channel at WQED-HD2 (89.3-2FM) and online at www.wqed.org/fm; local and national television and radio productions; WQED Interactive (www.wqed.org) and WQED Education (www.wqed.org/edu).
Throughout its history, WQED has partnered with hundreds of local community organizations toward improvements in education; diversity and inclusion, arts and culture; community health; economics; and important local issues through its unique form of civic journalism. As the only community-owned multimedia resource in the region, WQED is a convener, a central gathering place, and a conduit for other local non-profit organizations.
WQED has exported the region nationally with projects like The War That Made America, a four part historical documentary on the French and Indian War that aired nationwide on PBS; national cooking shows with Chris Fennimore; the Doo Wop music franchise; weekly national radio broadcasts of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and a continuing series of local and national documentaries by Emmy Award-winning producer Rick Sebak.
WQED’s national production, August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand, aired nationally on PBS American Masters in February 2015. The documentary focused on the life and work of Pittsburgh-native and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and included and extensive educational initiative in key cities across the country.
In November 2020, PBS aired WQED’s latest documentary Harbor From The Holocaust. The program told the riveting story of the plight of more than 30,000 Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s and found safe harbor in the port city of Shanghai, China.
Black Horizons premiered in April 1968, the same month as the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The groundbreaking program went on to become the nation's longest running series aimed at the African American audience. Alex Haley appeared on Black Horizons before the Roots catapulted him to national notoriety. A variety of performers have appeared including: opera star Demarius Cooper; rapper Tuffy Tuff; Kuntu Theatre performers; gospel singer Jackie Pullen; the Dana Movement Ensemble; and the African drum ensemble called Umoja.
In addition to the local and national documentaries, WQED produces and airs local programs that capture the stories of advancement, arts and diversity in our region, including documentaries like Portrayal & Perception: African American Men & Boys; Childhood Lost: The Adultification of African American Girls; Beacon for Change: The Pittsburgh Courier Story; Torchbearers: The Story of Pittsburgh's Freedom Fighters; Return To The Roots of Civil Rights; Come By Here: A History of Five Churches; Flyboys: Western Pennsylvania's Tuskegee Airmen; and The Good Fight.
Classical WQED-FM is “the voice of the arts in western Pennsylvania” by highlighting all that the station has meant for the region with retrospectives, tributes, community events, and celebrations. WQED-FM has offered classical and fine arts and cultural programs since its inception in 1973, allowing listeners to hear live and recorded classical performances and learn the latest arts and culture news from Pittsburgh and around the world. Listeners can hear WQED-FM at 89.3 and on its repeater stations, WQED-FM89.7 /Johnstown.
WQED Interactive, a media portal to the world, makes the aforementioned WQED programs all the more accessible to viewers and listeners, any time, and any place. WQED reaches close to 100,000 people through social media.
WQED Education is a national leader in lifelong learning and provides programming, online resources, teacher training and educational resources to local schools and libraries. WQED's educational goals and objectives are to provide new tools and models, thought leadership, research, and training on the intersection of media and learning to prepare our children for a competitive world. We provide content for science and technology; literacy; global cultures and connections; expression; social and community responsibility; and numeracy.
Candi Castleberry Singleton - Civic Leadership Award
Currently serving as the Vice President of Diversity Partnership Strategy & Engagement at Twitter, Candi Castleberry Singleton is a visionary, change-agent and the founder of the Dignity & Respect Campaign and other innovative programs on diversity and inclusion, employee and community engagement, and work-life integration. She is well-known for her commitment to organizational behavior change and inspiring people and communities to work better together.
Candi’s business acumen enhances her approach of partnering with senior executives, business process owners, and community leaders to build sustainable practices for the workplace and marketplace. As a recognized leader of diversity and inclusion, she has created successful strategies and initiatives in technology, telecommunications, and health care sectors including Sun Microsystems, Motorola, and University Pittsburgh Medical Center. She has led teams in operations and talent development, and acquired extensive experience in sales management, product marketing, and training, at Xerox Corporation.
An experienced strategist, Candi created The Bolt-On to Built-In Model™, an integrated inclusion model that helps companies transition from compliance-driven processes led by human resources, to integrated activities that shift the responsibility for achieving an inclusive culture to every employee. The model is featured in her chapter of Crossing the Divide: Intergroup Leadership in a World of Difference (Harvard Business School Press, August 2009).
Candi is an international speaker, teacher, and mentor. She has delivered inspiring keynotes and lectures from Beijing to Budapest to Boston and has served as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Heinz College for graduate education. She received an MBA from Pepperdine University, a bachelor’s degree in legal studies from UC Berkeley, and completed the Stanford University Executive Human Resources program.
Bill Nunn, Jr. -For Special Posthumous Award
Upon graduation, his basketball talents earned him an offer from the Harlem Globetrotters, but he instead chose the more sensible career path and followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the staff of the Pittsburgh Courier. His work ethic and intelligence earned him the position of sports editor, and eventually he replaced his father as the managing editor of the entire newspaper. Mr. Nunn had a unique eye for talent, and his vision at the Courier gave unprecedented extensive coverage to sports at historically black colleges and universities. Beginning in 1950, the Courier named a black college all-American football team and held an annual awards banquet in Pittsburgh.
By the late 1960s, Mr. Nunn was increasingly frustrated that National Football League teams had not drafted more of the players the Courier honored. Upon sharing his feelings with Dan Rooney, the son of Steelers’ owner, Art Rooney, he did not get an argument, but instead was hired by the Steelers. Mr. Nunn began working for the team part-time in 1967 and became full-time in 1969, the same year Chuck Noll became the head coach. Mr. Nunn’s relationship with the Steelers became a match made in heaven. Over the next decade, Mr. Nunn helped steer the team toward many players otherwise overlooked and undervalued, who went on to star for the Steelers teams that won four Super Bowls from 1975 to 1980. His connections to small black college coaches provided the opportunity for so many black athletes who developed into great players for the Steelers.
Mr. Nunn retired from his full-time position with the Steelers in 1987 but continued to play a role in assessing talent and advising the team on the draft. His knowledge and acumen for evaluating talent was so well respected within the organization that he continued to work part-time for the team until his death on May 6, 2014. He was 89.
The legacy Mr. Nunn leaves is undeniable. Despite having never played or coached college football, in 2010 he was part of the inaugural class inducted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame. Mr. Nunn was among the second class to be inducted into the Steelers Hall of Honor in 2018. For his endearing contributions to the sport in which he opened the door for many black athletes who likely otherwise would have never been given an opportunity, he has been named a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2021. He was always proud of the progress made towards racial equality in the NFL, and the result of his lifetime of work can still be seen to this day.