Mr. Hilton O. Smith – 2004

As Senior Vice President for Corporate and Community Affairs at Turner Construction Company, Smith’s duties include managing the company’s corporate affairs, minority and woman owned business enterprise program, and their equal employment and educational programs. He coordinates business development and strategic marketing programs with Turner’s senior executive officers as well. Smith has actively led Turner’s efforts in awarding over $20 billion dollars to thousands of minority and woman business enterprises. For four consecutive years, Turner has reached the one billion dollar mark in the MWBE utilization program. He oversees the national Turner School of Construction Management, which began in 1969, along with the James H. Walker Course in conjunction with the City of Cleveland. Annually, Turner’s 46 business units coordinate and provide educational opportunities in the construction industry for small businesses. This is an award winning and widely recognized program that has received many awards, including the U.S. Department of Labor’s EVE Award, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Award for Best Practices and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency Minority Advocate Award. Smith who follows a quality just like Martin Luther King Jr. also works for racial equality in the United States. Smith became active in the movement for Civil Rights and racial equality. In the Greater Cleveland area, he actively serves on the boards of The Cleveland Foundation, University Hospitals, United Black Fund, Urban League of Greater Cleveland, SCLC, and UCIP-ASAP.

Nationally, he enthusiastically serves on several other boards. Smith is an ordained minister and serves as an associate minister of the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church. He is married to the beautiful Delores and they have three children and four grandchildren.