Jimmy Henry, program leader of Community & Economic Development (CED), with the Cooperative Extension Program felt honored to receive the 1890 Excellence in Extension Award. The award presented in Orlando, Florida by the Association of Extension Administrators at the annual meeting of the Joint Southern Region Program Leadership Network had special meaning for the Cooperative Extension Program (CEP).

“Jimmy provides knowledgeable and respected guidance to the state’s

[Texas] community and economic development programs. Presenting him with this award is an example of how great our CEP workers are as a unit as well as how individuals reach their full potential,” stated Dr. Carolyn Williams, chair of the Association of Extension Administrators and Executive Associate Director for CEP.

Henry’s path to the 1890 Excellence in Extension Award started in 2003 conducting grass-roots programming in fair lending practices, generational wealth and professional networks. In his current role, Henry’s leadership addresses the disparities of underserved populations throughout Texas to thrive in their communities within entrepreneurship, small business development, and profit capacity building programs to access capital. Henry’s level of expertise taught his staff to look under the surface to tell you what the story is really about.

Henry organized his team to engage minority vendors operating in Texas to participate in a curriculum program necessary in successfully cultivating business relationships and sustaining them through efficient and professional business practices. This project referred to as the “Businesses In Development”(BID) Certification Program.

Since the inception of BID programs five years ago, Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) trained 468 entrepreneurs, reviewed568 state profiles, and submitted$129,465,320 in state contracts. The BID program is a Community and Economic Developments flagship program. It is executed in six of the CED counties.  As a result of this multi-county initiative, more than 19 million dollars was awarded to minority business clients, thousands of jobs created, and hundreds of new businesses established and expanded.

The Annual 1890 Excellence in Extension Awards is presented to individuals who strived throughout their careers and achieved benchmarks reflective of excellence in Extension educational programming.  The four program areas of the award are Agriculture & Natural Resources, 4-H Youth Development, Family & Consumer Sciences and Community & Economic Development.

Henry is a doctoral student at Prairie View A&M University’s educational leadership degree program with an emphasis in higher education administrative leadership. He holds a Master of Community and Economic Development (2003) and a professional degree in architectural planning (2002), both from PVAMU.