Neeli Bendapudi was born in Visakhapatnam, India, and came to the United States in 1986 to pursue her doctorate in Marketing at the University of Kansas. After earning her PhD, she went on to teach at Texas A&M University and The Ohio State University before returning to the University of Kansas in 2011 as the School of Business dean and Professor of Business. While there, she was promoted to Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor.

Bendapudi moved to Louisville in 2018 to take on the role of president at UofL, the first permanent female president and person of color to hold the position.

Her research has been published in top tier journals including the Journal of Academic Medicine, Harvard Business Review and Journal of Marketing, and featured by media outlets including the New York Times, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, WebMD and Fox News Network. She has experience on public and private boards and served as EVP and Chief Customer Officer of Huntington National Bank.

Bendapudi has sat on publicly held and non-profit boards and is a former Leadership Foundation Fellow of the International Women’s Forum, selected as one of 27 women representing 18 countries for this prestigious honor.

In her career, she has fought for equity and inclusion and in her time at UofL, has transformed the university’s culture, infusing a renewed passion in the city and community. The JFCS recognizes Bendapudi’s continued call to the university community and the Louisville community at large to celebrate diversity and foster equity in order to achieve inclusion.

“Like Neeli, JFCS respects the undeniable humanity of each person. This sentiment is one of our guiding values, called Kavod. Every day our staff serve clients and their families with Kavod because we believe that to truly serve all in Greater Louisville, we must first understand their strength and their story,” the organization stated in a blog post.��

She is one of five total recipients of this year’s award. Others include:

• Di Tran (Vietnam), a a business owner who launched the Louisville Beauty Academy in 2016. Tran received his master’s degree from UofL.��
• Berta Weyenberg (Cuba), who is the English as a Second Language Intake Center coordinator at JCPC.��
• Kaveh Zamanian (Iran), who was a clinical psychologist and certified psychoanalyst for 20 years before becoming founder, CEO and whiskey maker of Rabbit Hole Distillery in 2012.��
• Bapion Ziba (Burkina Faso), owner of Ziba’s Bistro in the Logan Street Market.��

Benadapudi and the rest of the MOSAIC Award winners will be recognized at a virtual event May 27 at noon on the JFCS social media channels, @jfcslouisville and website, jfcslouisville.org.��

From UofL, faculty members Anna Faul, PhD, and John La Barbera and iHub co-founder Vik Chadha will be honored, along with J. Barry Barker, director of Transit Authority of River City (TARC), and restaurateur Huong “CoCo” Tran.

Named to recognize “Multicultural Opportunities for Success and Achievement In our Community,” the MOSAIC Awards benefit Jewish Family & Career Services and honors international Americans who make a significant contribution in their profession and in the local and global communities.

“JFCS was founded to assist newcomers to Louisville, and this event honors its original mission,” said Judy Freundlich Tiell, JFCS executive director. “To date, the event has recognized 57 international Americans who make our community a richer and more interesting city, creating a mosaic of many colors and perspectives.”

At the event, a cocktail reception will start at 5:30 p.m., featuring a showcase of new micro-businesses that have received training and financial assistance from the JFCS Navigate Enterprise Center. Dinner and the awards presentation will follow.

Tickets to the event are $150 per person, and table sponsorships begin at $2,000. For reservations, contact Beverly Bromley, JFCS director of development, at 502-452-6341, ext. 223 or via email.

About the 2017 MOSAIC Award winners

Annatjie Faul, Ph.D. – South Africa

Faul originally hails from South Africa and is Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Health and Optimal Aging at the UofL Health Sciences Center and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Kent School of Social Work. A specialist in gerontology, Faul has been awarded multiple grants to develop rural health collaborations that address serious diabetes problems in the outlying rural areas of the state. She has established outreach programs to Latinos and Hispanics, created services in rural Kentucky, and most recently was awarded more than $2 million to help primary physicians in the region better serve the geriatric populations.

John La Barbera – Sicilian Descendant

The son of Sicilian immigrants, La Barbera is a first-generation American and Grammy-nominated composer/arranger whose music spans many styles and genres. He is a professor emeritus of music at the UofL School of Music and is an international music clinician and lecturer whose topics range from composing and arranging to intellectual property and copyright. His works have been recorded and performed by Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Torme, Chaka Kahn, Harry James, Bill Watrous and Phil Woods, to name a few. Though his major output has been in jazz, he has had works performed and recorded for symphony orchestra, string chamber orchestra, brass quintet and other diverse ensembles. He is a two-time recipient of The National Endowment for the Arts award for jazz composition. His published works are considered standards in the field of jazz education.

Vik Chadha – India

A native of India, Chadha is the co-founder of two successful technology companies – Backupify and GlowTouch – that collectively employ more than 1,300 people globally. He was instrumental in conceptualizing and creating the high-tech, co-working space, iHub, at UofL’s J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. His roles at EnterpriseCORP, the entrepreneurial arm of Greater Louisville Inc., and Nucleus allowed him to help create hundreds of high-paying jobs within the city of Louisville, and he has played an instrumental role in developing the city’s entrepreneurial environment. Chadha is a board member of the Jefferson County Public ����ֱ�� Foundation and was recently appointed by the governor to the board of the Kentucky Work Ready Skills Initiative.

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