Bio:
The great NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics is a yearlong achievement program designed to recruit, stimulate, and encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African-American high school students. ACT-SO includes 32 categories in STEM, humanities, business, performing, visual and culinary arts. Almost 300,000 young people have participated from the program since its inception.

How did you first learn about architecture and when did you decide that built environment profession was an area of interest for you?
This past year our very own Udo Anidobu won the local and national competition for architecture!!! She also interned with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and went on to begin her first architecture semester at UIUC. We are so proud!

What do you do?
The secret to our success is dedicated. We all have the common goal of elevating our youth and continuously committing to the program throughout the year. Without them, the great work we do will not be possible.

What excites you in the work you do?
We get the honor of working with some of the best and brightest students in the country. As the chapter and location that started it all, we take honor in up keeping a reputation of excellence then and now!

Who or what inspires you professionally?
We are inspired by the founder of our program Vernon Jarrett. He recognized the need to celebrate our accomplishments because no other platforms at the time were accepting of black talent. As a response to that gap, he founded ACTSO in 1978.

What is your proudest professional accomplishment or achievement?
Each year we have our gold medalists get to experience the national competition and network with other excellent students from all over the country. Win or not, we are proud to provide this network that continues with our students forever!

Featured Project Name: 
ACTSO Chicago Southside Chapter
 
Featured Project Location: 
Chicago, IL
 
Featured Project Completion Date: 
Ongoing

Role in Featured Project: 
Bryan Hudson - Chair
Quneshia Wilson - Co-Chair
 
Featured Project Description:
Each year we work with high school minority youth to help them realized their full potential. As a program that provides support for essentially Academic Olympics, we connect our students to experts in their area of interest. Pushing them to grow and compete with confidence prepares them to face any obstacle that comes their way.

Photography Credit:
Tiara Hughes - Marketing Chair