National Black Expo celebrates its 7th year with a 3-day consumer event in Chicago (its flagship location), and expansion to new cities. Black Expo Chicago (July 5-7) is joined by Expos in Birmingham, AL (September 14-15) and Nashville, TN (Oct 12-13). This year's theme in Chicago is "Understanding the Need; Accepting the Challenge." Visitors can choose from workshops such as "Is Racism on the Rise?" hosted by the NAACP and "Repair Your Credit," as well as entrepreneur seminars and a pie-baking contest. Shopping, exhibit booths and fashion shows, music and stage performances ensure that attendees are well entertained. NBC 5 is the presenting sponsor for the event. Title Sponsors include American Airlines, The Chicago Tribune, NBC, General Motors and Western Union.

This show opened simultaneously on the Web and in Hartford, CT. A year-long exhibit of work by Latino artists, it is the inaugural exhibition at the newly restored Old State House, considered the birthplace of democracy. "Latinos in this state have been shaped by the historical events that preceded them, including events that took place right here in the Old State House," said Luis R. Cancel, curator of the exhibit and President of Esperanto Internet Services (EIS). Cancel was Dinkens' Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and Executive Director of the Bronx Museum of the Arts. EIS, which provides multilingual HTML programming in 5 languages and Web site design, was established to provide the growing Internet community with tools to facilitate communications between individuals of diverse nations and cultures. Clients include The Smithsonian Institution, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Quipus Cultural Foundation in La Paz, Bolivia. The exhibit will be on the Web until May 30, 1997. www.esperanto.com

Person to person access to the large and growing Hispanic and Asian-American markets just got easier. To accomodate additional business generated by the boom in ethnic-American markets, TelAc, one of the leading providers of multilingual telemarketing services, announces the expansion of its Arlington, VA and Dallas, TX facilities by 20,000 square feet. Three hundred new state-of-the-art workstations help companies penetrate ethnic markets with outbound campaigns, customer service and inbound sales. Language capabilities include Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Khmer, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. Clients include Sprint, Ameritech, Nynex, Global One and The Voyager's Collection Catalog, among others. TelAc is extending an invitation to businesses targeting the ethnic-American market to tour the new centers in Arlington and Dallas.

Alison Berke, a web designer and founder of Great Neck, NY based bworks.com, has launched Beautyworks.com, an online website that helps "you discover the most beautiful you." Experts in skin care, relaxation, hair removal and makeup are listed by state. "I created this site because I believe that online directory based resources are the most efficient way of finding information on the Internet," she said. After success with The Electrolysis Referral Directory and The Chiropractic Resources Referral Page, Beautyworks.com was the next step. Berke is also the leader of Long Island Webgrrls, an organization dedicated to connecting women in new media to business opportunities through meetings and a Webgrrls Web Designers Directory. She teaches classes in web design and HTML at the Great Neck Adult Ed Program and at her summer beach house on Fire Island. The bworks.com website has the only page with exclusive rights to the Fire Island ferry schedule, as well as town descriptions. Professional Identity, a unique gift center, is also part of the site with a Scales of Justice pin or crystal nameplate to give a lawyer for passing the bar or becoming a judge. Also available, gifts for accountants, dentists and doctors.

"The Positive Impact of Diversity on Advertising" is the theme for an Ad Club of NY luncheon on September 12. A panel of speakers from ad agencies and ethnic media will address this topic following the screening of a new video produced by the Club's Diversity Committee. The video is intended to be shown to college students to entice them to enter the Advertising profession, and win back the minority talent that the industry is losing to fields of music, film and television. Sponsorship opportunities are available.

Segment Data Management (SDM) announces the availability to marketers of their Asian-Amerian database of over 2 million households. Through SDM's proprietary first name alogorithm, and one of the largest compiled surname tables of its kind (over 30,000), each name on the list is identified as Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese and is available for both Asian consumers and businesses. SDM also offers its segmentation services to clients wishing to enhance their own internal customer databases with ethnic identification and language preference. For the first time with a file of this magnitude, direct marketers can address Asian-American prospects using accurate ethnicity and dominant language spoken in the households, verified via telemarketing to be 96% accurate. The database is selectable by language preference data, presence of children, exact ages, income, phone numbers, length of residence, dwelling type and more. Asian-Americans represent over $150 billion in purchasing power, a market too important to ignore.

Women, who through organized club movements founded many of the nation's schools, hospitals and welfare institutions in the early part of the century, today lag behind men in charitable giving to institutions of higher learning. Could it be that parades of sports coaches and men interested in fundraising for buildings do not inspire women to remember their alma mater fondly with a check? The University of Wisconsin Foundation has responded to alumnae interests by endorsing a fundraising drive for the Gerda Lerner Scholarship Fund to provide fellowships for graduate study in Women's History. Professor Lerner, one of the pioneers in the field of Women's History and recognized as one of its intellectual leaders, recently addressed a gathering of NY-area UW alums, revealing material from her forthcoming book, Why History Matters. "Women in the early days of the 19th century who asked for a high school education were told that a woman needed enough geography to find her way around the kitchen and enough chemistry to keep the pot boiling," said Professor Lerner. "The Graduate Program in Women's History trains specialists to ensure that the gains made by women can never be eroded."

For the past 8 years, Nia Direct has developed direct response marketing plans to build business in the African-American market for clients such as General Mills, Kraft Foods, HealthQuest Magazine and MCI. President Andrew Morrison is well-known as an excellent resource on marketing to African-Americans. Despite their desire to shop by mail, black families receive only 10% of the direct-mail offers compared to the general market. That's why Nia's Coupons for Savings, mailed to one million African-American families, produces response rates as high as 8%. The upcoming Back-to-School mailing closed July 26th and will reach homes August 16th. Nia Direct recently issued a poster on the major African-American markets, showing that 85% of all black families reside in a triangle stretching from New York to Texas and Florida.

The Strategic Research Institute will present the third annual conference, "Strategies to Target Ethnic Markets: Asian-American, Hispanic and African-American," where attendees will learn from the successes of leading corporations and top agencies in reaching these markets. Speaking about their experiences in tapping the $750 billion ethnic market will be representatives from Coca-Cola USA, Bell Atlantic, Chrysler, Time Inc., Oxford, McDonald's and Hallmark Cards, Inc. www.srinstitute.com

Six outstanding women who beat the odds to become successful business owners were recently selected as winners of the 1996 Women of Enterprise Awards, created by Avon Products, Inc. in conjunction with the U.S. Small Business Administration. Now in its 10th year, the program honors exceptional women from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds who have overcome tragedy, prejudice or handicaps to achieve business success. Avon is making it possible for many of the Awards winners to be keynote speakers at select women's conferences, to share their inspiring stories and provide information about entrepreneurial opportunities for women. Women in the United States have sold for Avon, the largest direct selling company in the world, since 1886 - 34 years before they won the right to vote. Today, Avon has more women in U.S. management positions - 86% - than any other Fortune 500 company.

The Hispanic Federation of New York City (HFNYC) issued its Fourth Annual poll on the opinions and perspectives of Latinos on current public policy issues (immigration, education, crime and AIDS), media habits, and quality of life issues in NYC. Among the findings: Mayor Giuliani is up slightly in popularity but still hurting in the Hispanic community; widespread approval of President Clinton continues. The fifty page report contains key data and trend information for all survey years, 1993-96. The poll is one of many publications available from the HFNYC, a non-profit membership organization of over 60 Hispanic health and human service agencies in the City of New York. The 1996 survey is available for $30.

Working women continue to experience a great deal of frustration in the work world due to simple differences in the way men and women communicate as well as due to complex issues like subtle forms of discrimination. Significant problems persist, for instance, highly qualified women leaving law firms and sexual harrassment charges at brokerage firms. How can companies from all industries avoid these problems and foster an environment that is conducive, rather than counter-productive, to getting the job done? WOMENSPEAK offers customized seminars, workshops and consulting services in communication skills (personal, diversity-related, gender-oriented), leadership development, conflict resolution and values in the workplace. President Carmen Dubroc focuses on understanding rather than blaming. Her candid and upbeat approach is based on her own experience of over 25 years in senior marketing and management positions with Fortune 500 companies. The result is a practical bottom-line driven exploration of, and solution to, the many personal forces at work in business today.

In an effort to combat poor oral health among inner-city children nationwide, Colgate-Palmolive Company developed "Bright Smiles, Bright Futures" (TM) utilizing the entire community to improve the oral health care of inner-city youth. The comprehensive program integrates reading, science, math and other subjects while instilling important oral health habits. Big books, posters and sing-along audio and videotapes developed for multicultural audiences make learning about oral health lively and fun. In the community, local volunteers from the National Dental Association and the Hispanic Dental Association, the Head Start Bureau, civic leaders and public health officials come together to emphasize the importance of oral health as part of a child's overall physical and emotional development.