Business Alabama will honor five distinguished people as Lifetime Achievement recipients at the Business Alabama Awards on Feb. 28.
Honorees include Charles Anderson, a media and retail giant; George Barber, a real estate and motorsports visionary; Dr. Regina Benjamin, a pioneering health care advocate and former U.S. Surgeon General; Jim Hudson, a biotech innovator and champion of genetic research; and Dr. Jesse Lewis, a civil rights-era media trailblazer and business leader.
The five will be honored as part of the Business Alabama Awards during a luncheon at Birmingham’s Harbert Center. At the luncheon, awards will also be given for Large Company of the Year, Small Company of the Year, CEO of the Year, Startup of the Year, Project of the Year, Alabama Expat of the year and Philanthropic Project of the Year. Finalists for these awards were announced in December.
Previous Lifetime Achievement recipients include Sen. Richard Shelby, Jimmy Rane, Don Logan, Miller Gorrie, Lonnie Johnson, Frank Stitt and Pardis Stitt, David Bronner, Shelley Stewart and Abe Mitchell.
Here’s a look at this year’s recipients:
CHARLES ANDERSON
Charles Anderson is chairman emeritus of the companies founded by the Anderson family, which include Anderson Media, TNT Fireworks, Books-A-Million and Anderson Press. Born in Florence, Anderson began working in the family business – at that time two newsstands and three magazine and book wholesale trucks – after graduating from Florence State Teachers College (now the University of North Alabama). Anderson has served on the boards of First National Bank of Florence, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Heritage Trust Fund and the Shoals Economic Development Authority Board, as well as the national advisory board of the Salvation Army. Among other honors, he was named University of North Alabama Alumnus of the Year in 1979, was inducted into the Alabama Business Hall of Fame in 2002 and into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 2011 and the Florence Walk of Honor in 2016. He is a member of the president’s cabinet at both UNA and the University of Alabama. Anderson is chairman of First Southern Bank, which his family co-owns. Anderson lives in Florence.
GEORGE BARBER
George Barber Jr., a Birmingham native and Auburn University business graduate, is chairman of The Barber Companies, which includes Alabama real estate developments from Birmingham to a world-class marina in Baldwin County. Barber owned and was chair of Barber Dairies from 1970 until the company was sold to Dean Foods in 1998. Barber’s passion for motorsports culminated in the creation of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, which includes more than 1,800 motorcycles and more than 130 cars, including the largest collection of Lotus race cars in the world. The museum is the centerpiece of the 880-acre Barber Motorsports Park, which includes a world-class racetrack and the Barber Advanced Design Center for innovation in motorcycle and automotive design. Barber has endowed more than 500 scholarships, funded academic chairs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is a supporter of the Birmingham Museum of Art, McWane Science Ceter and the Nature Conservancy, among others. Barber, a co-founder of Sipsey Wilderness, has been named Alabama Wildlife Federation’s Conservationist of the Year.
DR. REGINA BENJAMIN
Dr. Regina Benjamin, founder and CEO of BayouClinic in Bayou La Batre, was U.S. surgeon general from 2009 to 2013. Benjamin specializes in prevention policies and health promotion, with a special interest in rural health care, health disparities among socio-economic groups, suicide, violence and mental health. She was the first Black woman and the first physician under 40 to be elected to the American Medical Association board of trustees, and she’s served on boards including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Catholic Health Foundation. The boards she currently sits on include Kaiser Hospitals and Health Plan, Ascension Health Alliance and Southern Research. Her many honors include Kellogg National Fellow, Rockefeller Next Generation Leader and a MacArthur Genius Award Fellowship. She is a recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, the National Caring Award and the Papal honor Pro Ecclesia et Pnticifice from Pope Benedict XVI. Dr. Benjamin is a graduate of Xavier University, earned her MD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an MBA from Tulane University.
JIM HUDSON
Jim Hudson is co-founder and chairman emeritus of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. A product of Huntsville public schools, the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Hudson worked for his family’s foundry business until it was sold, and then he started the company Research Genetics, which played a key role in the Human Genome Project. Hudson and the late Lonnie McMillan created HudsonAlpha. Hudson has been a founding board member of BIO Alabama, the Partnership for Biotechnology Research and a number of biotech startups. Hudson is a member of the Alabama Business Hall of Fame, has been named entrepreneur champion by the Women’s Business Center of North Alabama and is a recipient of a special council legacy award from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Alabama Innovation lifetime achievement award from the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama. A pilot during the Vietnam War, Hudson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the highest honor awarded to a military aviator. He and his wife, Lynn, live in Huntsville.
DR. JESSE LEWIS
Dr. Jesse Lewis is publisher emeritus of The Birmingham Times, the newspaper he founded in 1963 the midst of the civil rights struggle in Birmingham, and chairman of Agency 54. Born in Northport, Lewis in 1954 opened one of the first Black-owned advertising agencies in the country. Lewis’ other business ventures have included real estate, music publishing, TV stations, grocery stores and a golf course. He was president of Lawson State Community College from 1978 until 1987. Lewis has been inducted into the University of Alabama’s Communication Hall of Fame, the Birmingham Business Hall of Fame and the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. He also is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vulcan Park Foundation. Lewis, whose memoir “One Man’s Opinion: We Can Do This Together” was published in 2020, has five degrees, including from Miles College, Troy State University and Atlanta University, now Clark Atlanta University, where he earned a doctorate in education. He and his wife, Dr. Brenda Lewis, live in the Smithfield neighborhood of Birmingham. (Photo by Marika N. Johnson/The Birmingham Times)
