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From their undergraduate days to their current lives in business, George Weaver ’72 and Sylvia Daniels Weaver ’75 have been pioneers and leaders.
As African American students at Lafayette during the turbulent era of the Civil Rights and black power movements, Vietnam, and Watergate, they helped break new ground and create a smoother path for those who followed. Sylvia was among the College’s first women students, a member of just the second class of women to matriculate. George was among the College’s first black athletes, the first to play varsity basketball.
Among those who followed them to Lafayette are their daughters, Stephanie ’03 and Danielle ’07. Stephanie, an economics and business major, was among the first wave of legacy students whose parents were both alumni. Both Stephanie and Danielle, an art major, are among what remains a small number of African American legacy students to date.
George and Sylvia are still paving the way for future leaders. As director of worldwide engineering at Johnson & Johnson, George has played a key role in the global healthcare company’s efforts to recruit and retain minorities. Sylvia is vice president for quality assurance and process excellence of the Networking and Computing Services division of Johnson & Johnson Services.
A mechanical engineering graduate of Lafayette, George has 31 years of leadership experience with J&J companies. He launched J&J’s highly successful Engineering Leadership Development Program, which has been folded into a new, 24-month training program for college grads in business and the life sciences, as well as engineering. The program is highlighted in Diversity/Careers in Engineering and Information Technology in an article on various companies’ initiatives to support diversity.
Sylvia majored in English at Lafayette and holds a master’s in telecommunications and computing management from Polytechnic University. She is responsible for initiatives to create improvement in the areas of customer requirements, product and service quality, and efficient operations. Computerworld magazine featured her and other highly successful businesswomen in a discussion about the environment for women in information technology.
A member of the Lafayette Leadership Council, Sylvia has also been generous in sharing her expertise with Lafayette students. The recipient of this year’s Lois and Neil Gagnon Award for assisting students in career exploration, she was the featured speaker during career services’ inaugural “Get Your Career in Gear” week to prepare students for success at the annual on-campus career fair. In 1990 she received the Clifton P. Mayfield ’09 Outstanding Young Alumni Award.
There is, Sylvia says, a generation gap when she and George attempt to explain to Stephanie and Danielle what it was like on campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“A lot of things had to change,” she recalls. “There was a huge shift in behavior.” The tenor of the times, though, was intellectually invigorating. “In those days, you were expected to have a point of view – and to articulate it.” She’s satisfied that her generation broke down racial and gender barriers. But the change was so profound and came so fast she has difficulty conveying it fully to her daughters. “Today’s students don’t realize that it was a struggle.”
Stephanie is an analyst with Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems. Danielle, now in her final semester, plans on a career in graphic design.
“My mother, father, and sister had amazing experiences at Lafayette, and I wanted to experience that as well,” Danielle says. In addition to creating her own art, she has assisted Curlee Raven Holton in the Experimental Printmaking Institute and has been a leader in her sorority, Pi Beta Phi. “You come out of here really well-rounded. This is such a beautiful place.”
“Multicultural life at Lafayette is constantly developing and changing,” she says. “The Lafayette experience is not something that happens to the student, it’s something each student creates on his or her own.”
Will there be a third generation of Weavers at Lafayette? That’s down the road, but Danielle does confess to a bias when it comes to her children choosing Lafayette. “I’ll probably buy them Lafayette sweatshirts when they’re little and maybe keep the Weaver legacy going.”