The ATHENA Award is recognized internationally as the premier honor for excellence in leadership among business, professional and community leaders. The 19th Annual Greater Pittsburgh ATHENA Award Program was presented by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, yesterday, Monday, September 21st at the Westin Convention Center Hotel.
The ATHENA Award recognizes women in our community who:
Demonstrate excellence, creativity and initiative in their business profession
Contribute time and energy to improving the quality of life for others in the community
Actively assist women in realizing their full leadership potential
It is the program's explicit focus on the importance of mentorship that distinguishes the ATHENA Award among other honors for women in business. Homestead’s Shirley Anderson of Beauty Mark, Inc. was nominated by Charlene Newkirk, President of the South Campus of the Community College of Allegheny County for this prestigious award. Elayne Arrington, PhD wrote this amazing description of Ms. Anderson and the unique qualities she possesses.
In the third workstation at Shirley’s Beauty Mark in Homestead, there is a small plaque- not uncommon in such establishments- that declares: “I am a beautician, not a magician”. Those of us who really know Dr. Shirley Anderson beg to disagree.
Shirley just might have been a beautician back when she was 12 years old and decided to improve the self-esteem of a younger neighborhood girl by straightening and curling her unruly locks every week. She might have been just a beautician when she graduated from the Ella Rene Beauty School and began her apprenticeship with a local beautician 52 years ago. But a lot has happened since then. Everyone who enters the Beauty Mark for any of its variety of services leaves looking and feeling beautiful, so some would say that she is still a beautician. But Shirley Anderson is so much more than that.
When the name “Shirley Anderson” is mentioned in Homestead, everyone thinks foremost of “pioneer”. That is because at a time when much energy was expended – overtly and covertly- to prevent it, Shirley became the first African American to own a business on 8th Avenue in Homestead. This alone is a source of hope and inspiration to many in her community.
Years ago, in the mid 1970s, when I was a new Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, Shirley came to me and asked me to tutor her in math and business courses. She was already a very successful business woman, but she had enrolled as a student in the Pitt Business School. I agreed to do it only if she were serious and would come several times a week and not on an ad hoc basis. She never missed a tutoring session, even during a period when she was confined to crutches. She earned that business degree, not because she would necessarily earn more money, or because she was required to, but because she wanted to be the best business woman that she could be. She continued her studies and earned a doctorate in cosmetology. So I know that she values education.
For many years Shirley sponsored a dinner-dance aboard the Majestic of the Pittsburgh fleet to benefit the Negro Education Emergency Drive (NEED). This venture earned hundreds of thousands of dollars to contribute to the education of many needy African American students.
Dr. Anderson was the first recipient of the NEED Community Service Award for her outstanding support of education for the young, gifted and Black.
Dr. Anderson’s professionalism is legendary. Her original business has expanded to Beauty Mark, Inc. housing a beauty shop, a boutique, six apartments, and more. She is a much celebrated entrepreneurial success who has served as a mentor and role model for many. She has traveled nationally and internationally as an educational consultant with several major beauty suppliers.
Her numerous acts of kindness are never random. They are always carefully calculated to help someone develop self esteem or edify herself or himself to reach her or his full potential. She has used her academic and professional knowledge and her business acumen to help other African American woman in her community start businesses. She has used her personal resources when she thought that was what was needed. She has transformed herself and countless others with whom she has had contact. She has changed her community for the better - not because it was her job to do so, not because she would profit from doing so- but because it needed to be done.
We mathematicians often say that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Yet, to say that Shirley Anderson is an educator, a professional, a humanitarian, does not begin to say it all. To add that she is a pioneer, a role model, a mentor, still leaves much unsaid. I would say that with Shirley the total person is much more than the sum of its parts; in fact, I would have to say that Dr. Shirley Anderson is a mathematical anomaly.
On the walls and the counters of Shirley’s Beauty Mark in Homestead, there are many large plaques and other paraphernalia – quite uncommon in such establishments. These represent the proclamations, declarations, resolutions, awards, and certificates that governments, chambers, commissions, churches, museums and historical societies have seen fit to bestow upon Shirley these past 52 years. Yet, in spite of all the prestigious honors and accolades, those of us who have known her all along know that she is pretty much the same as she has always been.
Somehow, she has been able to “walk with kings and keep the common touch”. So, among the “Whereas”s, the “Therefore”s, and the “Be it resolved”s engraved on those large plaques on the wall, one thing is clear: governors, mayors, associations, pastors, historians, council people, and everyday people agree with what those of us who really know her have known all along: Dr. Shirley Anderson is indeed a magician!
