Award-winning actress, Viola Davis speaks to the Women of Tampa

The Hero’s Path – Award-winning actress, Viola Davis speaks to a sold-out crowd!

In 2007, the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce www.tampachamber.com began a program to nurture female business professionals in the Tampa Bay area. Now an annual event, The Women of Influence Luncheon, gives local women an opportunity to hear from women who have reached the pinnacle of their chosen field. The Chamber also holds quarterly events allowing local women to share their professional successes with the women’s series, “Pearls of Wisdom” programs.

This year, Award-winning Television, film, and theater actress, Viola Davis presented her thoughts on “The Hero’s Path” to the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce’s 7th Annual Women of Influence Luncheon. Speaking to a sold-out crowd in Tampa, Ms. Davis shared her “Path!” Born in abject poverty in her grandmother’s sharecropper house on an old South Carolina Plantation, she went on to become a happily married mother and an award-winning actress. Her definition of a Hero’s Path is to “simply be who you are.” She also pleaded for women to encourage each other.

2013 Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce’s Woman of Influence

Each year a local woman is given the “Woman of Influence” Award. This year Judith Lisi, President and CEO of The David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, was chosen as the award recipient. Her outstanding credentials are listed on the www.strazcenter.org website as follows: “Through her leadership, the Straz Center has significantly expanded its programming, established financial stability, retired accumulated debt, and has met the goals of three, five-year, long-range plans. Lisi’s arts management philosophy includes a belief in, and a commitment to, the community and to ensuring outreach, accessibility, and audience development for the entire community through multicultural and educational programming.” Lisi holds a Master’s Degree in theater and communication arts from St. Louis University, and has done doctoral work in theater at the University of Minnesota. She studied opera at the Juilliard School of Music and with the Metropolitan Opera. Previously, while serving as Executive Director of the prestigious Shubert Performing Arts Center in New Haven, Connecticut, the Shubert enjoyed artistic and financial success. In May 2002, the League of American Theatres and Producers honored Lisi with the Samuel J. L’Hommedieu Presenter of the Year Award for “bringing the magic of live theater to thousands of area residents through a variety of audience development and education programs.” In January 2008, Lisi received the prestigious Patrick Hayes Award for Lifetime Achievement from ISPA, the International Society for the Performing Arts.”

Congratulations Judith Lisi