The Board of Directors Endorses the Appointment of Interim Chief Executive Officer/President to Continue the Work and Legacy of Founder and Long-Term CEO, Vincent O. Leggett, “Admiral of the Chesapeake”
December 4, 2024, ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Following a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, Inc. (BOCF), we announce today that M. DeLois (Dee Dee) Strum, BoCF’s Chief Administrative Officer, and accomplished business and nonprofit executive will assume the role of Interim Chief Executive Officer with all authority and duties as prescribed in the bylaws (as amended).
Effective immediately, she leads an enthusiastic and committed team of staff, volunteers, and consultants to realize the clear vision of elevating the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color in climate resiliency planning, preservation of BIPOC communities and cultural sites located at the water’s edge, facilitating community environmental education, and growing the next generation of environmental justice champions, through strategic alliances and partnerships with local youth-serving organizations, and area/regional/national/international environmental conservation and cultural preservation organizations.
“Dee Dee is a well-respected community leader in central Maryland who can continue the work inspired and launched by the organization’s internationally renowned founder, Admiral Vincent Omar Leggett, in 1984. She understands that climate change, extreme weather events, and sea-level rise pose a threat to the entirety of the Chesapeake watershed, with an ever-present and imminent threat to the life and livelihood of the most vulnerable water’s edge communities founded by enslaved Africans and their descendants who struggle to maintain their generational legacies and continue to rely on the Chesapeake waterways for their economic success,” said Reverend Samuel T. Williams, BOCF Board Chairman and Chairman of the Economic Empowerment Committee Maryland Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“Dee Dee’s academic training at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park in community development and her undergraduate and graduate degrees awarded by the UMD School of Public Health prepared her for this role. Her background and accomplishments as a 35+ year entrepreneur underscore her value to the BoCF in this transition period. She assumes this role with deep nonprofit and public sector development and management experiences, having led her firm with land use planners, community engagement/financial management, and other specialists, providing planning and consulting services to more than 20 start-up community-based organizations nationwide and hundreds of public local and state agencies across the continental U.S. and Caribbean. These experiences, along with her tenure as the 7th national president of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc., with 65+ chapters nationwide, have prepared her to step into this role and effectively partner with the entire Board and a dedicated team of staff, volunteers, consultants, and BoCF partner organizations to execute our mission successfully,” continued Reverend Williams.
Ms. Strum received numerous recognitions and awards from the U.S. Small Business Administration, multi-year awards from the Harvard University-based Initiative for a Competitive Inner-City Corporation, commendations from multiple local mayors, city councils, federal officials, and locally, the Dr. MLK Drum Major award from the Annapolis-based Caucus of African American Leaders in 2021.
“It is a privilege to continue the advocacy and community preservation efforts launched by Admiral Vincent O. Leggett four decades ago to “Elevate Black Voices” in community preservation, public policy, and environmental justice. BoCF leaders and volunteers will continue his groundbreaking work to engage the community and stakeholders in the Planning for an Environmental Education and Black Culture Center at the City’s planned visitor center on the site of the former Elktonia Beach/Moore Property, that holds great significance as a place where the region’s African American families could find Black-joy during the period of lawful racial segregation era known as ‘Jim Crow.’ Finding such joy was an act of resistance at a time when laws and traditions continued to degrade the lives and economic opportunities afforded to others. After the success of the 17-year public campaign to ‘Save Elktonia,’ Vince envisioned a cultural center to share the many regional stories and artifacts that document the contributions of the enslaved Africans and their descendants to the success of the region’s maritime and seafood industries. We will not abandon his efforts to ‘tell the whole story’ of the Black watermen and women who continue to build and sustain the Chesapeake Bay as a multi-billion-dollar industry,” said Dee Dee Strum, Interim CEO. “The future of educating our youth and the public about their proud heritage is more important now than ever and central to our mission and purposes.”
Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation is a 501 © (3) organization committed to advancing diversity, inclusion, and justice in all it does now and into the future.
About the Author
It looks like ‘The Boss Man’ sitting on the bow, directing all their efforts.
Who is the Executive Director of The Whites of The Chesapeake?
You can’t have one without the other.
You seem to be the Executive Director of the EKH’s. Eastern Shore Knuckle Heads.
What’s a Knuckle Head, Racist, Homophobe, Sexist, Bigot, or Hater ?
Anyone winning an argument with a liberal…
Instead of calling me a 1939 Harley Davidson engine, why not debate the facts I stated above?
I’m searching for some “facts” you stated but they must have fallen off the page. Could you point them out?
I am quite sure you can figure it out for yourself. If not, I am also quite sure there is a community college that you could pay to help you with your reading comprehension skills, that are obviously severely lacking. You can not be that dim and besides, I have no interest in helping you.
I don’t think he was even talking to you, Mr Helper.
What it is, Scrapple, dude!
Your extensive and largely complete wit and knowledge of pretty much all worth knowing about in the last millennium or so has been missed by those in here sophisticated enough to know the difference and miss them.