Coors Light’s Steve Canal, the field marketing manager for the Southeast region (right), presents the 2012 Ice Cold Leader Award to Bobby Howard (left), during a reception held in Howard’s honor Wednesday, May 2 at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery. Howard, LifeLink Manager of Georgia’s Multicultural Donation Education Program, was identified as one of six exceptional community leaders across the country by Coors Light, and named Atlanta’s Coors Light Ice Cold Leader through an online consumer vote.
Below is what Howard believes the intangibles that makes the Coors Light Ice Cold Leader.
For more information, visit www.IceColdLeader.com . (Photo courtesy of MillerCoors/Paras Griffin). -terry shropshire
A leader is a person who has a vision and the drive, experiences and commitment to achieve that vision. Good Leaders Are Made Not Born. I see this platform not as a competition but as an opportunity to share my mission on saving lives. I can accomplish this goal by empowering minorities with lifesaving information on organ and tissue donation. As a kidney transplant recipient, I understand the magnitude of organ donation.
Diseases such as diabetes and hypertension will often lead to organ failure. More than 100,000 men, women, and children in the United States need organ transplants, with minorities making up more than 54.2% of the transplant waiting list. Every day, approximately 18 people die while waiting for an organ transplant, and there are more than 400,000 people in the United States who rely on dialysis. This is a tragedy, so we need good leaders to help fight this epidemic.
For the past 17 years, I have worked as the Manager of LifeLink of Georgia’s Multicultural Donation Education Program. I have toured across the state sharing my testimony on the “Gift of Life” – partnering with celebrities and churches – to dispel the myths associated with organ donation. My efforts have increased the number of African American organ donors in Georgia from 8% to 38%.
Some may think I deserve to win this award because I received a full football scholarship to Indiana University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree and went on to play professional football with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In addition, I was recently awarded an honorary doctorate for my humanitarian efforts, but helping to save lives is my greatest accomplishment.
I believe that life is a gift, knowledge is power, people deserve a second chance, sports can teach discipline and help build character, today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders, children deserve safe schools to learn and grow, mentoring is most effective when you are hands-on, and leadership is easy when people trust you. Working together we can save more lives, so please vote for me as your Coors Ice Cold Leader.
