Excellence in leadership. (Publisher's Page).

The current National Football League season comes to a close when Super Bowl XXXVI is played on February 3, 2002, in New Orleans. There were 21 African American quarterbacks on the rosters of the 31 NFL teams this season. Today, this observation seems barely worth a mention, but it wasn't long ago that whether or not blacks could play quarterback, the preeminent leadership position on any football team, was the subject of heated debate. That changed in 1988, when Doug Williams became the first black quarterback to start for his team in a Super Bowl. When Williams led his Washington Redskins to overwhelming victory over the Denver Broncos, throwing for a Super Bowl record 340 yards and earning MVP honors for good measure, he proved once again that, given the opportunity, African Americans can not only perform in positions of leadership but we can also excel. Thanks in large part to Williams' dominance of Super Bowl XXII, it is no longer big news for an NFL team to draft a black quarterback, nor is it a career risk for a head coach to name him as his team's starter.

The selection of Richard D. Parsons to succeed Gerald Levin as CEO to the $36 billion AOL Time Warner media empire is evidence of a similar evolution of thinking in corporate America. Until very recently, the idea of an African American named as CEO to a major multinational corporation was just as inconceivable in the minds of most as a black quarterback leading a team to a Super Bowl win was 13 years ago. Yet, when Parsons takes the helm of the legendary media giant in May of this year, he will become the fifth African American CEO of a Fortune 500 company--only three years after Fannie Mae's Franklin Raines became the first.

To be sure, racism in corporate America is still a reality--the glass ceiling may have a few barely perceptible cracks, but it hasn't shattered. After all, there are still only a handful of black CEOs among the thousands running major corporations. However, thanks to the performance of top black executives including Raines, former Avis CEO A. Barry Rand and American Express Chairman and CEO Kenneth I. Chenault, the concept of an African American CEO is no longer a radical consideration for directors and shareholders of major corporations. After all, "if American Express and AOL Time Warner can do it," I can practically hear them thinking, "why can't, we?"

More important is what the visibility and performance of African American CEOs mean to the cadre of young black corporate talent, now in their late 30s and early 40s, still in the pipeline and poised to step up. That's why we, at BLACK ENTERPRISE, remain dedicated to our leadership role of not just covering top black corporate performers when they make it to the top but also spotlighting their achievements along the way--long before mainstream business media sits up and takes notice. In fact, we first featured Parsons in BE back in 1975, when he was an assistant counselor to New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Just as Williams' performance in Super Bowl XXII gave credence to the ambitions of today's crop of young black quarterbacks, the leadership of the first wave of black CEOs of major corporations is inspiration for ambitious African American professionals to believe that "I, too, can get there." No matter the arena, our message is clear: Given the chance to perform, we can--and will--excel.