Convocation features guest speaker Victor Labat

SHREVEPORT, La. (Centenary News Service) — Founder and president of Labat-Anderson Inc., Victor Labat, will be the featured Dream Week 2011 Convocation speaker Tuesday, Jan. 18. The event is scheduled to take place in the Whited Room of Bynum Commons beginning at 11 a.m.

Victor Labat

A retired business executive, Labat has more than forty years of experience in both the private industry and the Federal Government. His experience included senior Federal management positions, and management and technical consulting to foundations, institutions of higher learning, and private industry, both within the United States and internationally.

As Chairman of Labat-Anderson Inc., he directed a multidisciplinary professional consulting corporation of specialist providing domestic and international management services to government and private industries. Incorporated in 1989, the company has grown from a small business to a staff of nearly 2,000 over a 17-year period, and operates in more than 35 countries worldwide.

Labat has actively supported the development of major Federal minority development programs. He has been a participant in and a supporter of the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program, and participant in the National Association for Equal Opportunity organization for the promotion and development of Majority Black Colleges and Universities.

In the late 1960s he served as the Associate Director for the Educational Resource Center on School Desegregation at Tulane University. He was later requested to join a group of desegregation experts to assist the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Assistant Attorney General of Justice, Civil Rights of Division to design and implement a strategy to desegregate schools throughout the southern United States.

Mr. Labat holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Arts from Xavier University of Louisiana. He has advanced studies in courses by the American management Association, The Small Business Administration and the Public Affairs for Public Administration, University of Southern California, Washington D.C.

He is a member of the Board of Visitors at Xavier University, a member of the Global Health Advisory Board for Intra Health International, and has also served as the Mission Director of the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa.

The convocation is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Dr. Kelly Weeks, Diversity Chair, at 318.869.5183.

About Centenary College of Louisiana

Centenary College is a private, four-year arts and sciences college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Founded in 1825, it is the oldest chartered liberal arts college west of the Mississippi River and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Centenary is one of 16 colleges and universities constituting the Associated Colleges of the South and has been recognized as "One of the Best 373 Colleges" by the Princeton Review and one of "America's Best Colleges" and one of "America's Best Private Colleges" by Forbes.com. In 2008 Centenary College celebrated 100 years in Shreveport and Bossier City.