Keynote Speaker

Bio for Introductions

Congresswoman Donna F. Edwards represents Maryland’s 4th Congressional District comprising portions of Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties.  She was sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 110th Congress in June 2008, and began her first full-term in the 111th Congress in 2009.

Rep. Edwards is a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Science and Technology Committee.  She also serves on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

Just prior to serving in Congress, Rep. Edwards was the executive director of the Arca Foundation in Washington, D.C. where she worked on issues such as securing a “living wage” for working people, protecting social security, and promoting labor and human rights both nationally and internationally.  She was also the co-founder and executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence where she led the effort to pass The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Rep. Edwards completed undergraduate studies at Wake Forest University and received her Juris Doctor from Franklin Pierce Law Center. She is the proud mother of one son, currently attending university.

Morris H. Blum  Humanitarian Award
President Barack Obama

Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.
With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton’s army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.
He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.
After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.
President Obama’s years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world’s most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.
He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the parents of two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dream Keeper’s Award
Vincent DeMarco

Vincent DeMarco is the President of the Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative, a coalition of more than 1000 organizations seeking to ensure quality, affordable health care for all Marylanders. The Initiative was the lead organization working for the Governor’s Working Families and Small Business Health Care Coverage Act of 2007, which expanded health care to over 100,000 uninsured Marylanders. He is also the National Coordinator of Faith United Against Tobacco, a coalition of national faith groups that helped to enact the landmark 2009 law authorizing the FDA to regulate tobacco products.
Mr. DeMarco was previously executive director of the Maryland Children’s Initiative, which united more than 350 organizations in Maryland to successfully promote a state cigarette tax increase. A front-page article in the Baltimore Sun on August 26, 2000, recognized the key role that Mr. DeMarco and the Maryland Children’s Initiative played in enactment of the tobacco tax increase, which resulted in a 16% decrease in cigarette sales in Maryland.
Mr. DeMarco has been a leader of the state and national anti-gun violence movement.  Between January 1995-June 1997, he was the Director of Community Outreach for Handgun Control, Inc., where he created a coalition of more than 100 national organizations to defeat the gun lobby’s effort to repeal the national assault weapons ban. Between January 1992-December 1994, he built a statewide coalition in Maryland which lobbied successfully for the Child Gun Access Prevention Law of 1992, the 1994 Maryland Assault Weapons Ban, and the 1996 Maryland Gun Violence Prevention Act, which limits handgun sales to no more than one per month and regulates private sales of handguns. 
Mr. DeMarco also was the leader in the campaign to enact Maryland’s 1988 Saturday Night Special Ban and defend it against the gun lobby’s campaign to overturn it. 
Mr. DeMarco’s efforts have been widely recognized.  He received the Families USA Consumer Advocate of the Year Award; the Baltimore Sun named him 1988 Marylander of the Year, and the Baltimore Magazine in 2000 named him Baltimore’s “Best Advocate” for his work on reducing gun violence and teen smoking. He also received the the Central Maryland Ecumenical Council’s s Reverend Bryce Shoemaker “Ecumenical Leadership Award.”
Between October 1983-December 1991, Mr. DeMarco was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Maryland, where his work included helping to draft and lobby for enactment of the Home Improvement Guaranty Fund. Mr. DeMarco received a BA in Political Science and an MA in American History from Johns Hopkins University, and a JD from Columbia Law School. He is a member of the bar in Maryland and New Jersey. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, Molly Mitchell, and is a member of the Homewood Friends Quaker Meeting.

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Drum Major Award
Dr. Cornelius Musura

M. Cornelious Musara is a Doctor of Medicine, currently working with Ashwin Nanavati in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Dr. Musara completed internships at Parirenyatwa and Harare hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Michigan Sate University Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. He completed his residency Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., receiving his medical license from the District of Columbia in 1999 and from the Maryland Board of Physicians in 2002.
Dr. Musara has more than 15 years of experience in Family Practice and General Surgery. He is a Fellow of the American college of Surgeons and member of the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine, University of Zimbabwe. He has received many honors for his work in Anatomy and Physiology, and in Community Medicine, as well as a Distinction in Biochemistry and Attending of the Year at St. Agnes Hospital. He has frequently been a presenter on damage control surgery at the Conference on Trauma at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. From 2006-2008, Dr. Musara presented on breast cancer awareness at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center. He is currently conducting research on Laparoscopic Appendectomy versus Open and Laparoscopic Ventral Hernia Repair.  Dr. Musara is an avid reader, traveler, and a former soccer coach for children.