Beard '84 wins NAACP Image Award

Hilary Beard ’84 won a 2015 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Award earlier this month for a book she coauthored in 2014, "Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life."

The book, a companion to the Sundance award-winning documentary American Promise, is part of that film’s campaign to support young African-American men in fulfilling their potential and closing the educational achievement gap. Beard said that filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michele Stevenson invited her to write the book to accompany the film, which follows two middle-class African-American boys’ educational journey from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

“ ‘American Promise’ raises issues of race, gender, privilege, unconscious racial bias, parenting styles and other issues, but offers no solutions," Beard said of the film. “[In contrast,] ‘Promises Kept’ contains a cafeteria menu of research-based best practices for parents and educators of black children, particularly males."

She said the main challenges involved in writing the book were planning, time management and endurance.

“We got the deal in May [2013] and the book was due in February [2014]," she said. "Nine months is not a lot of time to write a book whose content is rooted so heavily in research; 18 months or even two years wouldn’t be unreasonable."

She was ultimately able to research and write the book in less than five months, she said, noting that the scope of the book increased about 40 percent during that time.She said she interviewed approximately 35 experts and reviewed the works of about 15 scholars.

“[The interviews] occurred in random sequence, which increased the project’s complexity," Beard said. "It was exhausting and at the time seemed impossible, but failure was not an option."

Beard had also previously won the NAACP Image Award in 2013 for her book,"Health First: The Black Woman’s Wellness Guide."

Beard graduated with honors from the University after concentrating in political science and was involved with the Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding, which was then known as the Third World Center.

“I contacted with, was supported by and learned about other students of color," she said. “Even though I’d grown up in an integrated community and with a lot of wealthy white kids, I found Princeton to be a very difficult place to be a black person."

Reginald Ponder ’84, classmates and longtime friends with Beard, said he met Beard through shared interests.

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“Hilary and I were in the same class, so being in the same class and having a lot of the same interests — from an African-American standpoint, we bonded," he said.“The Third World Center meant a lot during those times and it was really a hub for African-American students ... Hilary was a very big part of that and I was too."

Ponder, who is also a film critic, said he was familiar with Beard’s work.

“The particular work that she wrote is extremely important because it relates to African-American men and education and how you approach them as opposed to how people view African-American men today," he said.

Cheryl Scales ’84, Beard’s friend since the age of 17, said she remembered Beard as intellectually curious.

"Hilary and I worked at the same Fortune 100 Company after Princeton," she said. "When she decided to leave to pursue her writing career, I was always a champion of her pursuit at a time when leaving such a successful place was not as easy as career changing is today."

Beard worked in a number of sales, marketing and management positions at Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo before realizing in her thirties after the death of her motherthat writing was her calling, she said.

“Walking away from a traditional career path — which someone with my background is not supposed to do — and following my dreams of becoming a writer and landing on my feet" was the most valuable moment in her career, she said. “Few opportunities existed for black writers when I was growing up ... Seeing Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Terri McMillan atop The New York Times bestseller list back in the late 90s signaled to me that publishing was changing and that there might be a place for me in it."

Beard said aspiring writers should experiment with different types of writing.

“The industry is tough and very competitive," she said. "Don’t allow yourself to become trapped in only one form."

She said she is currently working on several book proposals and has just finished a children’s book that is a memoir of Little League pitcher Mo’ne Davis.