Boyd Tinsley rocked a very different crowd today. The virtuoso violinist of the Dave Matthews Band was one of the keynote speakers at the leadership conference for the Ron Brown Scholar Program, which awards college scholarships to African-American high school students, at the Paramount Theatre on the Downtown Mall.
Tinsley addressed the roughly 180 college scholarship recipients in attendance about his personal experience as a young, poor, black student raised in Charlottesville. “I don’t know where you guys come from, but I know we have very similar backgrounds,” he said. “I am you and you are me.”
The program was named for the late Secretary of Commerce and was established to provide scholarships for young African Americans with outstanding academic and leadership records.
Themed “Local Service–Global Change,” this year’s conference served tribute to community service’s impact on the world and recognized Tinsley for his effort to aid underprivileged kids in the Charlottesville area. He started the Boyd C. Tinsley Foundation, which helps students with school tutoring, music lessons and instruments, as well as tennis lessons, one of Tinsley’s passions.
“I have no limits to what I can do and so should you. I still think the band and I just started,” he said. “That’s what successful people think.”
Geraldine Pierre is a 2004 Ron Brown Scholar and a 2008 UVA graduate. "The mission of the program inspired me to strive to achieve success," says Pierre, an economics and African-American studies double major. "And thanks to the great support network, I got great internships that helped me land my next success."
In the fall, Pierre is headed to the University of North Carolina at Chapell Hill to get a master’s in public health.
Boyd Tinsley rocked a different audience today as one of the keynote speakers of the Ron Brown Scholar Program Leadership Conference.