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Sam Beard (born 1939) is a social entrepreneur, and public servant. [1] With Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Robert Taft Jr., Sam created and Co-Chaired the Jefferson Awards, an American Nobel Prize for public service and youth leadership training. [2] [3] The Jefferson Awards has since been re-branded to Multiplying Good, and impacts one million students a year.
Beard was raised in New York City and graduated with a BA from Yale University in 1961, an MA from Columbia University in 1965, and attended Stanford Law School from 1962-1963. Sam began his career working with U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a low-income community in Brooklyn, New York focusing on social justice and the elimination of poverty. [4]
In 1969 after the assassination of Senator Kennedy, Beard founded the National Development Council. The council has since been responsible for billions of dollars of revitalization financing.
Beard has initiated and chaired programs for eight Presidents of the United States, including Presidents Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. [5] One highlight of working with the eight presidents is the creation of more than 10 million jobs in impoverished communities across America.
Beard ran in the Democratic primary for the 1988 U.S. Senate election in Delaware. In 1992, he helped to create the President's Youth Service Awards for volunteerism. Beard also worked with former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor, Bill McLaughlin to revitalize the Wilmington, Delaware riverfront. He also served on President George W. Bush's Social Security [6] Reform Commission.
Recently, Beard founded the non-profit organization GIFT (Global Investment Foundation for Tomorrow) to harness the full impact of the mindfulness and meditation movements to solve urgent global problems. [7]
The inspiration for GIFT came out of his experience in using mindfulness and meditation techniques to deal with a high stress period. Beard was excited at the far-reaching impact it had in improving all aspects of his life. This interest soon grew into a mission Sam predicts will be the most significant outcome in his life of service - Early Childhood Development - Birth to Three.
By the age of three, newborns and toddlers experience the most rapid cognitive and socio-emotional development in their lives. The first three years define a child's success in school and later in life. The goal is to develop limitless potential to every baby. The brain science is proven and globally accepted.
Sam is married to Joan Beard, and has three children. Alex Beard is an artist in New Orleans, Hillary Schafer runs Multiplying Good in New York City, and Morgan Beard is a Life Coach in Los Angeles. Sam also has five grandchildren.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a form of silent meditation developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The TM technique involves the silent repetition of a mantra or sound, and is practiced for 15–20 minutes twice per day. It is taught by certified teachers through a standard course of instruction, which costs a fee that varies by country. According to the Transcendental Meditation movement, it is a non-religious method that promotes relaxed awareness, stress relief, self-development, and higher states of consciousness. The technique has been variously described as both religious and non-religious.
Wilmington is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Wilmington was named by Proprietor Thomas Penn after his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who was prime minister during the reign of George II of Great Britain.
Air Force One is the official air traffic control designated call sign for a United States Air Force aircraft carrying the president of the United States. The term is commonly used to denote U.S. Air Force aircraft modified and used to transport the president, and as a metonym for the primary presidential aircraft, VC-25, although it can be used to refer to any Air Force aircraft the president travels on.
Daniel Goleman is an American psychologist, author, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. His 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times Best Seller list for a year and a half, a bestseller in many countries, and is in print worldwide in 40 languages. Apart from his books on emotional intelligence, Goleman has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, ecoliteracy and the ecological crisis, and the Dalai Lama's vision for the future.
Michael Richard Beschloss is an American historian specializing in the United States presidency. He is the author of nine books on the presidency.
Harris Llewellyn Wofford Jr. was an American attorney, civil rights activist, and Democratic Party politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1991 to 1995. A noted advocate of national service and volunteering, Wofford was also the fifth president of Bryn Mawr College from 1970 to 1978, served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in 1986 and also as Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry in the cabinet of Governor Robert P. Casey from 1987 to 1991, and was a surrogate for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. He introduced Obama in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center before Obama's speech on race in America, "A More Perfect Union".
John Charles Carney Jr. is an American politician serving as the 74th governor of Delaware since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Carney served as the U.S. representative for Delaware's at-large congressional district from 2011 to 2017 and as the 24th lieutenant governor of Delaware from 2001 to 2009. He also served as Delaware's secretary of finance from 1996 to 2000. He first unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2008, losing to Jack Markell. He ran for governor again in 2016 and won, succeeding Markell, who was term-limited. He was reelected in 2020, defeating Republican Julianne Murray with 59.5% of the vote.
Mindfulness is the cognitive skill, usually developed through meditation, of sustaining meta-attention towards the contents of one's own mind in the present moment. Mindfulness derives from sati, a significant element of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and is based on Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan meditation techniques. Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions describe what constitutes mindfulness, such as how perceptions of the past, present and future arise and cease as momentary sense-impressions and mental phenomena. Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Joseph Goldstein, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Richard J. Davidson.
In political studies, surveys have been conducted in order to construct historical rankings of the success of the presidents of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion. The scholarly rankings focus on presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures, and faults. Popular-opinion polls typically focus on recent or well-known presidents.
Matthew P. Denn is an American lawyer and politician from New Castle County, Delaware. He served as the 45th attorney general of Delaware from 2015 until 2019. Denn previously served as the 25th lieutenant governor of Delaware from 2009 to 2015, and was the Insurance Commissioner of Delaware from 2005 to 2009. After leaving public office, Denn joined the global law firm DLA Piper as Managing Partner of the firm's Wilmington office.
Wendy Sue Kopp is the CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunity in their own countries and the Founder of Teach For America (TFA), a national teaching corps.
Ashley Blazer Biden is an American social worker, activist, and fashion designer. She served as the executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice from 2014 to 2019. Before her administrative role at the center, Biden worked in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families. She founded the fashion company Livelihood, which partners with the online retailer Gilt Groupe to raise money for community programs focused on eliminating income inequality in the United States, launching it at New York Fashion Week in 2017. Biden's parents are President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
Barbara Ann Perry is a presidency and U.S. Supreme Court expert, as well as a biographer of the Kennedys. She is also the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, where she co-chairs the Presidential Oral History Program. As an oral historian, Perry has conducted more than 100 interviews for the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush Presidential Oral History Projects, researched the President Clinton Project interviews, and directed the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project.
Alan Khazei is an American social entrepreneur. He served as chief executive officer of City Year, an AmeriCorps national service program he co-founded with Michael Brown, his friend and roommate at Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week, evidence-based program designed to provide secular, intensive mindfulness training to help individuals manage stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. MBSR was developed in the late 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. It incorporates a blend of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga, and the exploration of patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and action. Mindfulness can be understood as the non-judgmental acceptance and investigation of present experience, including body sensations, internal mental states, thoughts, emotions, impulses and memories, in order to reduce suffering or distress and to increase well-being. Mindfulness meditation is a method by which attention skills are cultivated, emotional regulation is developed, and rumination and worry are significantly reduced. During the past decades, mindfulness meditation has been the subject of more controlled clinical research, which suggests its potential beneficial effects for mental health, athletic performance, as well as physical health. While MBSR has its roots in wisdom teachings of Zen Buddhism, Hatha Yoga, Vipassana and Advaita Vedanta, the program itself is secular. The MBSR program is described in detail in Kabat-Zinn's 1990 book Full Catastrophe Living.
The 1996 United States Senate election in Delaware was held on November 5, 1996. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Biden won re-election to a fifth term. This was the first Senate election in his career in which Biden's margin of victory decreased from the prior election.
The Jefferson Awards Foundation was created in 1972 by the American Institute for Public Service. The Jefferson Awards are given at both local and national levels. Local winners are ordinary people who do extraordinary things without expectation of recognition. Local winners come from national networks of "Media Partners" and "Corporate Champions", from the associated "Students In Action", Lead360, and the GlobeChangers programs. The Jefferson Awards Foundation is led by its CEO, Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, its president, Sam Beard, and its chairman, Jack Russi, in conjunction with the Foundation's board of governors.
Matthew S. Meyer is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected New Castle county executive in 2016 and again in 2020.
Nnamdi O. Chukwuocha is an American politician and poet. He is a Democratic member of the Delaware House of Representatives, representing District 1. He is also the current Poet Laureate of Delaware, along with his twin brother, Al Mills.
Chase Center on the Riverfront is a 92,000 square foot convention center in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. It hosts various local concerts, conventions, and banquets for the Wilmington area.
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