ODESSA (Oct. 28, 2024) – Odessa College will hold its annual OC Honors Luncheon to celebrate outstanding individuals and organizations who have contributed to improving education in the Permian Basin. At a separate event Tuesday evening, OC will announce the student winner of the $10,000 cash prize.
Those recognized at this year’s OC Honors will be Outstanding Individual – Jay Hendricks, Outstanding Educator – John Wilkins, Outstanding Non-profit – Crisis Center of West Texas, Outstanding Business – JSA Architects, and the Community Impact Award winner – Laurie Johnson.
Individual tickets and tables are available for purchase online at odessa.edu/OCHonors/ and tickets will also be on sale at the event.
The celebration luncheon, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Tuesday, October 29, will take place at the Odessa Marriott Hotel and Conference Center with Emmy-winning and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maria Hinojosa featured as the keynote speaker.
Later that evening at 6 p.m. at the OC Sports Center, Hinojosa will speak at a special event for students and the public, where the student winner of the $10,000 cash prize, celebrating OC’s fall enrollment of 10,000+ students, will be announced. The first runner-up will receive a $2,000 scholarship, and the second runner-up will receive a $1,000 scholarship, courtesy of the Odessa College Foundation.
In 2010, María Hinojosa founded Futuro Media, an independent, nonprofit newsroom based in Harlem, NYC, with the mission to create multimedia content from a POC perspective. She has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America andabroad as the Anchor and Executive Producer of the Peabody Award-winning show Latino USA, Co-Host of Futuro Media’s award-winning political podcast In the Thick, and, most recently, her Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast Suave. Hinojosa has won FOUR Emmys, The John ChancellorAward, TWO Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Overseas Press Club Edward R. Murrow Award, and the Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the author of four books: Crews, Raising Raul, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, and The Young Reader's version of her memoir Once I Was You. Hinojosa is the Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at her alma mater, Barnard College. These days her focus is deep accountability investigative journalism.