Steve’s love for stand-up comedy made him one of the Kings of Comedy in a 1997 tour and taping of the Spike Lee-directed, The Original Kings of the Comedy, which became one of the best selling DVDs in history.

Steve currently serves as host of the Family Feud game show, bringin new life to the series and increasing its ratings by 40 percent.

Steve hosts the Steve Harvey Morning Show which entertains approximately 7 million listeners each week and gives relationship advice based on letters listeners send in.  Because of his success in giving advice to the lovelorn, Steve authored the best-selling book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.  To date, two million copies have been sold.  His second best-selling book, Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep and Understand a Man, quickly followed.

Steve also co-hosts the CENTRIC TV network, with The Steve Harvey Project, in which he plays a variety of comical characters and participates in numerous skits.

Having a passion for providing young people with educational opportunities, he founded the Steve Harvey Foundation partnering with Walt Disney World to create the annual Disney’s Dreamers Academy.  Mr. Harvey mentors 100 teenage boys and girls through Disney’s Dreamers Academy, while providing learning opportunities for career and job skills.  His Steve Harvey Mentoring Weekend for Young Men gives teenage boys without fathers a chance to spend the weekend at his dallas ranch to engage with mentors.  Comedian, philanthropist, family man – whether he’s critiquing a call-in singer, reading a “Strawberry Letter,” penning a book or mentoring young men, Steve Harvey continues to fill the world with smiles and laughter.

Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas on June 7, 1917 to a schoolteacher mother and janitor father who was the son of a runaway slave who fought in the Civil War.  Born with a gift for writing, at the age of 13 her first poem was published in a children’s magazine.

By 16, Gwendolyn had already compiled a portfolio of nearly 75 published poems and at 17, she began submitting her work to the poetry column of the Chicago Defender Newspaper.

In 1943, Brooks received an award for poetry from the Midwestern Writer’s Conference, and two years later, her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, published by Harper and Row, brought her instant critical acclaim.  She received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was named one of the “10 Young Women of the Year” for 1945 by Mademoiselle Magazine.

In 1950, her second book of poems, Annie Allen, won Poetry Magazine’s Eunice Tietjens Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Brooks was invited by President John F. Kennedy to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival in 1962.  After that experience, she began teaching creative writing at various colleges.

Her work In the Mecca, a book-length poem about a mother searching for her lost child in a Chicago housing project, was nominated for the National Book Award for poetry.

Brooks was made Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968.  In 1985, she became the Library of Congress’ consultant on poetry, the first Black woman to hold that position.

She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1988, and in 1995, was presented with the National Medal of Arts.  her many honors also included the Frost Medal, more than 75 honorary degrees from colleges and universities worldwide, and the first Woman of the Year Award from the Harvard Black Men’s Forum.

Gwendolyn Brooks died on December 3, 2000 at the age of 83, yet her memory lives on in her many poetic works.

Dr. Tatum received a B.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1975, where she graduated magna cum laude.  She immediately enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she earned her M.A> in clinical psychology.  She was a Dissertation Fellow at the Center for Black studies in the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1980 to 1981.  In addition, from 1982 to 1983, she worked as lecturer in Black studies.  She went on to complete her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan in 1984.

Dr. Tatum’s career has been just as amazing as she is, taking her from Assistant Professor of Psychology in 1983 to Associate Professor in 1986 at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts.  Following her six-year professorship at Westfield, she went to Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, a highly selective, non-denominational, liberal arts college.  She began her career at Mount Holyoke in 1989 as an Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, becoming a full professor in 1996.  By 1997, she was a department chair, followed by 1998 where she became Dean of the college and Vice President for Student Affairs.  She served her “presidential internship” in the spring of 2002 when she became acting president while the college president, Joanne V. Creighton, was on a six-month sabbatical.

In 2002, Dr. Tatum became the ninth president of Spelman College. Under Dr. Tatum’s leadership, Spelman is now one of the most selective women’s colleges in the United States.

Dr. Tatum is widely recognized as a scholar, teacher, race relations expert and leader in higher education.  She has written several best-selling books, won numerous awards and sits on the Georgia Power – Corporate Board of Directors; and was appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Board for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

President Tatum is married to Dr. Davis Tatum.. They are parents of two adult sons.

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