HBCU Legacy Bowl Chair and Saints-Pelicans VP Shaneika Dabney-Henderson Promotes the 'Value' of the Career Fair and Scholarships for HBCU Students
Today marks 90 days before the HBCU Legacy Bowl and New Orleans Saints organizations will present the HBCU Legacy Bowl Career Fair for students and student-athletes matriculating at HBCU institutions. Shaneika Dabney-Henderson chairs the HBCU Legacy Bowl committee for its inaugural season.
As Vice President of Production for the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, Dabney-Henderson took a moment to discuss the uniqueness of the game, career fair, scholarships, and partnership between the event and New Orleans' professional franchises.
Equally important, she detailed why Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson has committed to ensuring the success of the HBCU Legacy Bowl for its founders Doug Williams and James "Shack" Harris.
Shaneika Dabney-Henderson, HBCU Legacy Bowl Committee Chair
OFFERING AN OPPORTUNITY
Besides being a sportswriter, I have enjoyed a twenty-nine-year career as a professional recruiter, placing talent in various sectors across the nation. I listen to job seekers and employers daily and have a pulse on what most young minorities desire in today's workforce — an opportunity.
Shaneika Dabney-Henderson embodies what the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans required when offered the "opportunity" to become VP of Production. To lead the franchises' production department transformation, Mrs. Benson and her team valued Shaneika's experience, talent, intelligence, leadership, passion, and progressive thinking. Also, being a native of New Orleans provided a portion of Lagniappe.
Dabney-Henderson hopes, like her, a company or organization at the HBCU Legacy Bowl Career Fair will "provide job opportunities and career counseling" for the attendees at the session.
Dabney-Henderson shared that "the career fair is going to give HBCU athletes an opportunity that they typically don't have and should have had to compete for a job in the NFL, but this career fair, is really going to do the same thing.
For other students who are at HBCUs the non-athletes and expose them to opportunities on a broader scale than they typically get access to.
We're gonna have companies there that are actively looking for young leaders and future stars and these students will have an opportunity to get that face time to get that access that they've may not typically get and potentially walk away from it with an opportunity."
The key again, is an "opportunity."
INTERNSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Eight graduating seniors at the four Louisiana HBCU institutions — Southern, Grambling, Dillard, and Xavier — will be selected by the committee to have an internship during the career fair. The students will have direct access with business leaders, motivational speakers, and featured panel session participants. Also, they will be enriched with "behind the scenes" experiences and access rarely given to college students.
Shaneika is a native of New Orleans and serves as the current Vice President of Production for the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans organizations. She is not an HBCU graduate, but her cultural roots in New Orleans exposed her to elements of the HBCU experience from the homecomings, parades, football games, and pageantry.
Being a first generation college graduate, Dabney-Henderson and her family understands the importance of receiving a college education. Her nephew Tristen Edgerson had an untimely death earlier in 2021. He recently graduated from college and interned for me at Saints News Network. The HBCU Legacy Bowl will honor his name with the Tristen Edgerson Scholarship.
"I am so excited that the HBCU Legacy Bowl is going to provide two scholarships. It'll be $2,500 scholarships each to HBCU students and this scholarship will be the "Tristan Edgerson Scholarship," and named after my nephew who passed away earlier this year of a brain aneurysm.
And, he was, as an aspiring sports broadcaster. He at one point attended Grambling which is an HBCU obviously. And, I was so thrilled to hear that they would allow his legacy to live on through this scholarship.
We will we hope it will help other students like Tristen who didn't have the access to come up in an in a privileged environment where doors were just easily opened for him. We want to give this to a student like him that hopefully it will help them to get that footing that they need to take that next step," expressed Dabney-Henderson.
She also remarked that her "family wanted his tragedy to turn it in to something positive."
Tristen Edgerson
NEW ORLEANS SAINTS VALUE HBCU TALENT
The HBCU Legacy Bowl Career Fair hopes participating companies will see value in HBCU students and provide opportunities to mold their skills and talents.
Dabney-Henderson thoughtfully communicated how the New Orleans Saints franchise value HBCU educated employees and local citizens who positively impact the Greater New Orleans community.
"They [Saints and Pelicans] also recognize the value in HBCU schools and students and we have been kind of as an organization dipping our toe even more so into those waters. And over the past year we've done some mentorship programs with HBCU battle of the brains which has been hosted typically at South by Southwest but they they have to do it virtually they've also done all HBCU office hours through that where the president of the Saints and Pelicans Dennis Lauscha, myself, and Swin Cash.
We took part in that event and did some mentoring opportunities with students and HBCU schools. And so now this is just the natural next step, right?
Having an opportunity to in a very official capacity partner with an organization and event that we hope and feel very strongly will help to just bring these HBCU athletes and put them on a different level and give them a different level of exposure.
And then again, through the career fair, helping students get access that they don't traditionally have. So, this is the direction that the organization wants to go because they understand the value.
We've got HBCU graduates who work in our organization. I'm thinking about Jesse Thomas, who is a graduate of Spelman, and who is a rock star in that organization.
They see the value of these schools and they see the types of students that are being produced from HBCUs and HBCU education and I think it's great not just for the face, but as I mentioned earlier, that just from a global standpoint, HBCUs are finally getting their long overdue respect for the level of talent that they're putting out both on the sport side and on the business side.
Listen to the complete interview here:
The New Orleans Saints organization hopes the HBCU Legacy Bowl will become another "tentpole" event in New Orleans, noted Dabney-Henderson. The Big Easy is the annual host to the Bayou Classic, Jazz Fest, Essence Festival, Sugar Bowl, and many other sports and cultural events. The HBCU Legacy Bowl committee anticipates the game and week-long sessions will be steadfast fixtures in New Orleans for many years.
Doug Williams and James "Shack" Harris envisioned that the inaugural all-star game would garner corporations, sponsors, and NFL athletes' support, and it's coming to fruition. The two HBCU legendary men hope athletes and students will have an opportunity to network, engage, interview, join the participating organizations and gain access into beginning successful careers.
The HBCU Legacy Bowl Career Fair will be held at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans Hotel inside Elite Hall B on February 17-18 from 9 AM to 5 PM. Admission is free to the public.