“Black Excellence: Journeys of Success” by University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School student Lynnewood Shafer will be published by New Degree Press in August 2021.
The goal of “Black Excellence” is to educate, inspire, and inform the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, executives, professionals, and more through the stories and advice of those who currently occupy those ranks. The hypothesis is that no matter how ordinary we think we are, we are each capable of extraordinary results, and “Black Excellence” seeks to model how to achieve those results while being grounded in experience.
Shafer grew up in Burlington, New Jersey, and earned a degree in accounting at Drexel University. After Drexel, he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a CPA. He served as president of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) at Drexel and later as the Director of Professional Education for NABA’s Philadelphia chapter where he helped lead efforts to diversify the profession through a program called Passnow. This initiative was intended to address the low percentage, 3% according to the CPA Journal, of African American CPAs.
“When I spoke with Kenneth Frazier, chairman & CEO of Merck, who is also an attorney, for ‘Black Excellence,’” says Shafer, “he spoke about the importance of both collective action and individual excellence. Therefore, for me my goal is to learn and develop into the best professional I can be. Penn has given me great training to build from and to hopefully contribute to diversifying these elite professions and coveted spots in society.”
Read more at Penn Law News.
