Honoree Esther L Bush 2021 NABHI Lifetime Achievement Award

shortly after earning her master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Johns Hopkins University. “I began providing workshops and I ended up writing a course that I thought would be good for freshmen, so they would start thinking about their careers and what they’d need to do to move forward,” she says. “I showed it to the director of the department and said, ‘Would you share it with the dean and see if he would approve it as a one-credit class that freshmen would take?’ Eventually my boss said the dean wanted to talk with me. The Dean said, ‘You want to offer this for one credit? There is no way I would ask anybody to do this for one credit — I’m willing to put it forward for three credits.’ And that was one of the largest accomplishments in my life. I had written a three-credit course — I was so happy. ”It showed her the value in grabbing opportunity, something she has urged others to do over the years: “Be prepared, be bold, take a chance, ask questions,” she says. The National Urban League recruited her in 1980 for a job in New York as assistant director of its Labor Education Advancement Program (LEAP), helping to place women in nontraditional jobs. It was the perfect position for a gutsy, outspoken woman who wasn’t afraid to travel to 25cities across the country to make a difference. “I can tell you that I placed some of the first female bricklayers, firefighters, police officers, electricians,” she says. “I used to love to go around to construction sites and just look around and say, ‘Hmm, I don’t see any Black people, much less women.’ I would talk to the construction manager and say, ‘I am positive you are receiving federal dollars, are you not? What are you turning in on your EEOC report?’ And the reaction I’d get — that was so fabulous. But that’s exactly the way that I did it. ”It laid the foundation for a successful career that has earned Bush many accolades — and a chance to influence even more people through various roles on boards and involvement with organizations, such as the Links, a professional organization that focuses on friendship and service, and the International Women’s Forum (IWF), for which she helped to plan the Pittsburgh chapter’s 25th anniversary celebration this year. Bush has served on the Pennsylvania State Board of Education, Pennsylvania Commission for Crime and Delinquency, Law Enforcement and Community Relations Task Force, Governor’s Commission on Academic Standards, and the Voting Modernization Task Force, as well as several committees to establish the Home Rule Charter form of government for Allegheny County. She was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania in 2003, Distinguished Member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Robert Morris University Chapter, in2014, and Distinguished Alumni Awardee, Johns Hopkins University, in 2017.In addition, she has served as a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Committee, and boards for UPMC, the United Way, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Duquesne University, among others. Throughout her career, she has liked best “the fact that I could do anything I want, as long as it [was] a direct service to the African American community. #18ricco #ncmawards #estherbush