CompTIA Blog, 8/31/2011 (Stephanie Brown, Charles Eaton, Wayne Hicks)

Two Foundations Team Up to Provide Scholarships for Talented Minority Students. By the time she had graduated from Stanford University, Stephanie Brown had already completed internships with Fortune 500 companies Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Deloitte. She was only 21. Getting connected with BDPA in high school put Stephanie Brown on a learning track that led to a managing stint at Microsoft.

Says Brown: “Here I had all these awesome role models. It was a turning point in my life.”

Brown attributes much of her success to an organization that has been quietly helping African American students succeed going on four decades. Today with chapters in more than 40 cities, the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) has been helping middle school and high school students develop interest and acumen in technology fields such as IT in which minorities (and women, for that matter) tend to be under-represented.

Read the full CompTIA Blog post.

YouTube, 8/5/2007 (Perry Carter, Donna Woodall)

BDPA and Microsoft Local News Interview (2007 NBDPA Conference Washington, D.C.). Donna Woodall of Microsoft and Perry Carter, NBDPA's Host Chapter President are interviewed by News Channel 8's News Talk host, Bruce DePuyt.

CSRwire, 7/28/2003 (Allison Clark, Juan Gilbert, Milt Haynes, Wayne Hicks)

BDPA Plans Gala Silver Anniversary Conference. BDPA is bringing its 2003 national conference back to Philadelphia this year. The conference will run from August 13-17. "Philly is the birthplace of BDPA," says Milt Haynes, BDPA's national president. Haynes is an IT project manager at Lucent Technologies (Naperville, IL). IT pros Earl Pace and the late David Wimberly started BDPA in Philadelphia almost thirty years ago. This will be the organization's twenty-fifth national conference. "We expect the conference to have a big impact this year," Haynes says. He estimates that attendance may top last year's figure of 2,000 by 25 percent.

Read the full media story here.

Microsoft Press Room, 11/1/1999 (Kristi Torgrimson, Ian Heisser, George Williams, Santiago Rodriguez, Pat Coleman, Chester Grice)

Microsoft, BDPA Reach Out to Minority Communities. When Kristi Torgrimson started participating in a computer training camp at Microsoft in preparation for a national high-school computer competition sponsored by Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA), she was a pretty quiet kid. But it wasn't long before her instructors began to see changes in Kristi. Over the course of two summer sessions, she became more outgoing, more confident, and she even obtained a high-school internship at Microsoft. Kristi has twice been selected to be one of four students on the team representing the Seattle BDPA Chapter at the national competition. She still keeps in touch with one of her Microsoft instructors -- by e-mail, of course.

Read the media story here.

BDPA Washington DC, 8/11/1999 (Jimm Middleton)

Microsoft Supports BDPA-DC. BDPA-DC, a chapter in the country's premier Information Technology organization - BDPA Information Technology Thought Leaders, announces the receipt of a significant software donation from Microsoft Corp. Through its Federal Systems division, Microsoft donated software valued more than $13,000. The donated software includes the latest version of its popular Microsoft Office 2000 suite, which includes word processing, spreadsheet and graphics packages, as well as Microsoft Encarta Africana Reference Suite.

Read the full press release here.