On Wednesday, May 16, 2018, Eisenhower Fellowships will honor its chairman, General Colin L. Powell, USA (Retired), as he steps down after 12 years of dedicated service and leadership at a celebratory gala dinner at the National Constitution Center. Eisenhower Fellows from around the world will join Trustees, donors and other friends of the organization to pay tribute to their longtime chairman.


PHILADELPHIA (PRWEB) MAY 07, 2018
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 5PM MAY 15, 2018
On Wednesday, May 16, 2018, Eisenhower Fellowships will honor its chairman, General Colin L. Powell, USA (Retired), as he steps down after 12 years of dedicated service and leadership at a celebratory gala dinner at the National Constitution Center. Eisenhower Fellows from around the world will join Trustees, donors and other friends of the organization to pay tribute to their longtime chairman.

To celebrate General Powell’s lifelong legacy of leadership and his tenure at Eisenhower Fellowships (EF), Jane Golden, founder and executive director of the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, will unveil a mural of General Powell that Philadelphia public high school students created for permanent display at the Olney Charter School in the Olney neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia.

Golden, an Eisenhower Fellow to Ireland in 2003, and students at Olney Charter School will present the mural recognizing General Powell’s contributions as “Soldier, statesman, leader, and champion of young people everywhere.”
The mural is being funded by the Independence Foundation and created in conjunction with Philadelphia Commissioner of Human Services, Cynthia Figueroa, an Eisenhower Fellow to Argentina and Chile in 2010. In addition to the city mural, a group of talented students from the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts will perform a musical tribute to General Powell at the dinner.

Reflecting the nonpartisan nature of Eisenhower Fellowships, an independent, nonprofit international leadership organization, past leaders from both major American political parties will pay tribute to General Powell. Former Vice President Joe Biden, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and former Bermuda Premier Sir John Swan are among those scheduled to deliver remarks, along with former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who will succeed General Powell as the new Eisenhower Fellowships chairman. The evening will also feature special video tributes from former Presidents George H. Bush and Barack Obama, former National Security Adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, James A. Baker III and Condoleezza Rice.

“General Powell’s visionary leadership and his passion for the leaders around the world served by Eisenhower Fellowships have been instrumental in moving forward this organization,” said EF President George de Lama. “He has inspired our global network of Fellows with his deep commitment to leadership, diversity and freedom.”

General Powell, a former U.S. Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Adviser to President Ronald Reagan, succeeded former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when he assumed leadership of Eisenhower Fellowships in 2006. Previous Eisenhower Fellowships Chairmen include Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.

Eisenhower Fellowships
Founded in 1953 as a tribute to President Dwight Eisenhower, Eisenhower Fellowships is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit international leadership organization that identifies outstanding midcareer leaders from all fields and brings them to the United States for individualized fellowships of meetings with top experts across the country, and sends ascendant American leaders overseas to do the same.

Since its inception, Eisenhower Fellowships has sponsored more than 2,400 leaders from more than 115 countries around the world, among them four heads of state, more than 300 who have served at the Cabinet or ministerial level, and hundreds of business leaders, university presidents and heads of major non-governmental organizations.
For more information, please visit http://www.efworld.org or contact:
Susan Kohler Reed, Director of Programs and Communications 
skohler(at)efworld.org 
215-965-1973