CEO of Minority-Owned Technology Firm RS Information Systems Honored for Business Achievement.

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

Rodney P. Hunt, president, CEO and co-founder of the largest African American-owned company in the DC area, has received the first Lifetime Achievement Award of the Parren J. Mitchell Foundation.

Parren Mitchell is the former U.S. Congressman from Maryland who for more than three decades led efforts to open up opportunities for African Americans and other minorities seeking to do business with government.

It was Mitchell who led the successful fight in the 1970's for legislation requiring government set -asides for minority-owned businesses and for legislation requiring government contractors to spell out their goals for awarding contracts to minority contractors.

Under Hunt's leadership, RS Information Systems (RSIS) of McLean, Va., has grown in barely ten years into an award-winning professional services company focusing on the highly competitive federal market. With a professional staff of 1300, 65 percent of whom are women, minorities, veterans and the handicapped, the company expects revenues to reach $200 million this year.

Renard H. Marable, Mitchell Foundation president and CEO, said, "For evidence of the justice and wisdom in Parren Mitchell's fight for opportunities for minority businesses, one need look no further than the success of Rodney Hunt's RSIS."

The dinner was held June 20 at Martin's Crosswinds, Greenbelt, Md.

Economic progress was the theme. Mitchell, who was elected the first Black Congressman from Maryland in 1970, said Civil Rights progress in the United States must be measured in good part by the economic strides made by African Americans and other minorities.

Dinner speaker and co-founder of the Mitchell Foundation, the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., reminded the audience "political power is a hollow victory without economic power."

In describing the Lifetime Achievement Award to Hunt, the Foundation said: "By any valued measure - revenues, rate of growth, quality of work, diversity of its people, contribution to community - Rodney Hunt has produced a company that embodies the best of America's free enterprise system. And in doing so, he has demonstrated that a minority-owned company - one committed to true diversity - can produce remarkable achievements in a highly competitive New Economy environment."

In a survey published by Black Enterprise in its June issue, RSIS is the largest African American-owned company among all industrial and services companies in the Washington D.C. area, and, nationally, the fifth fastest-growing and 24th largest company owned by an African American.

The 400 dinner guests included Congressmen Elijah Cummings and Albert R. Wynn of Maryland; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Melvin Steinberg; Marcellus Jackson, director, Economic Development Center at Clark Atlanta University; Dr. Theodore A. Adams Jr., acting chairman of the Mitchell Foundation and chairman and CEO of Unified Industries Inc. of Springfield, Va., and Delegate Talmadge Branch, chair of the Maryland Black Legislative Caucus.

The mission of the Parren Mitchell Foundation is to establish endowed Mitchell Chairs in Business, Public Policy and Transportation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to provide scholarships, establish community outreach programs to teach, coach and mentor junior and high school students, and help young people adopt business or public service as careers.

Note: For photographs, please contact Jim Amanna, Corporate Communications, RS Information Systems, at 703.734.7800 or [e-mail]