ODU's Lett-Brewington Wins ACHI Playwright Award
July 28, 2014
Lett-Brewington (from left) at the ACHI Gala with Alicia Phillips, ODU associate director for Intercultural Initiatives, and her daughter, Aaliyah Phillips; Cecelia Tucker, ODU director of community relations; and ODU students LaShon McKay and Shaina Wesley.
La Wanza Lett-Brewington, who is the director of the Old Dominion University Women's Center, was a performing arts category winner at the first annual ACHI Magazine Awards Gala Sunday, July 27, at the Westin Hotel Town Center in Virginia Beach.
Lett-Brewington, who joined ODU last year, is a playwright and stage performer in addition to being an expert in fields that more typically support her work a the Women's Center. These fields include equal opportunity and affirmative action compliance, cultural competency, diversity awareness and social justice.
She was named the winner from among six nominees for the 2014 ACHI Playwright Award. ACHI is a Hampton Roads-based quarterly women's magazine that was launched less than a year ago. It is published in online as well as print versions.
In 2010, Lett-Brewington wrote and performed a one-woman play portraying Lucy Terry Prince, who has been called the first African-American poet. Prince lived in Massachusetts in the mid 1700s, and the first performance of the play was in Greenfield, Mass. Since the debut, the playwright/actress has performed the play at public schools and colleges throughout New England. Lett-Brewington plans to perform the play at ODU in February 2015.
Additionally, Lett-Brewington has written and performed plays about equal rights pioneers Sojourner Truth and Rosa Parks.
About 150 women were nominated in 29 ACHI Awards categories this year. The categories reflect the magazine's focuses on person growth and empowerment of women, specifically through informative and inspirational articles about careers, culture, health, beauty and fashion.
For the past quarter-century, Lett-Brewington has been president, CEO and executive consultant for Plain Talk Consultants, specializing in leadership, diversity awareness, multicultural organizational development, conflict resolution, mediation and equal opportunity and affirmative action compliance.
During her career, she has also served as executive director of Safe Passage, the primary violence prevention and intervention agency for Hampshire County, Mass. (2007-11); director of the Five College Consortium Violence Prevention Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2005-07); director of community education at the Everywoman's Center at UMass Amherst (2002-05); shelter director at the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition (2000-02).
Lett-Brewington holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the UMass Amherst in diversity education in organizations and social justice education, respectively.